The price of crude oil is forecast to soar ever higher under a US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that began this afternoon. Prices “should be $140, $150” a barrel if the naval blockade continues, Jorge Montepeque, managing director of oil traders Onyx Capital Group, told Bloomberg.

What is Trump’s plan?
US forces will board and potentially seize any vessels in the strait that pay Iran’s toll, a move that would effectively close off the waterway entirely. The president warned on social media that “any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL”. Although “at some point” an agreement on free passage would be reached, he said, other countries would be involved in blockading the strait until then. Keir Starmer said the UK would not join the blockade.

What are the potential effects?
There’s “little clarity” about how the US navy will take control of the strait without “reigniting” the conflict with Iran and “causing another shockwave” in global money markets, said Michael Evans in The Times.

The blockade “might risk worsening a war-driven global energy crisis”, said The Washington Post. Although Iran would “potentially suffer the most economically”, it may also “come as a blow to the rest of the world”, particularly nations in Asia, which “rely heavily” on oil and gas from the Gulf.

What was experts’ verdict?
Initially, Trump’s plan will only affect the small number of vessels still navigating the waterway, shipping expert Lars Jensen told the BBC. If the US does blockade the strait, it will “halt a very tiny trickle” of vessels, and “in the greater scheme of things, it doesn’t really change anything”.

The blockade is a good “counterpoint” to Iran’s closure of the strait, Dennis Ross, a former senior US diplomat and Middle East negotiator, said on X. It puts “greater pressure on Iran” and “great pressure on China to pressure Iran”.

But former US official Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the Financial Times that the plan will be “fine by the Iranians”, because it “prolongs the chokehold on the global economy”.

Tottenham Hotspur’s defeat at Sunderland yesterday plunged them into the Premier League relegation zone with only six matches left to save their season. No football club wants to be relegated but the drop can be particularly tough for a famous side like Tottenham, said The i Paper, because “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”.

Departing jewels
Spurs’ wage bill is the seventh highest in the Premier League, at £2.63 million per week – nearly twice as much as relegation rivals West Ham. A clause in player contracts imposes a 50% pay cut if the club is relegated, but sports finance expert Rob Wilson said this is “nowhere near enough”. Spurs would need to cut wages by a minimum 75% to “balance” the books.

The club would then need to sell the “crown jewels” in the squad, such as Archie Gray, Djed Spence, Dominic Solanke and Cristian Romero. Rival clubs will “squeeze down the value” of players and “open with offers 30%-50% below Spurs’ asking price”, said Wilson. Its annual revenue, which was £565.3 million at the last count, would be expected to drop by £200 million after relegation.

Big target
The experience of other big clubs relegated from the Premier League offers little hope for Spurs fans. Between 2000 and 2003, Leeds United finished in the top five of the league and reached the semi-final of the Champions League in 2001, but the club was still relegated in 2004. Three years later, Leeds dropped into League One, the third tier, where they spent three seasons. It took them 16 years to get back to the Premier League.

When Manchester City were relegated from the Premier League in 1996, they too ended up in the third tier. They returned in 2002, after changing divisions six times in a “dizzying seven-season period”, said The Sporting News.

When Aston Villa were relegated in 2016, they won only one of their first 12 matches in the Championship. The then Villa player Ashley Westwood said that as a former Premier League club, you play with “a big target on your back” in the Championship. “Did teams try harder against us? It certainly felt like that,” he told The Athletic.

Rory McIlroy celebrates his 2026 Masters victory on the 18th green at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. The Northern Irish champion is only the fourth back-to-back winner of the tournament, after Tiger Woods, Nick Faldo and Jack Nicklaus.

David Cannon / Getty Images

With its “green, rolling hills” and “patchwork of pinot noir and chardonnay vineyards”, Oregon’s Willamette Valley has been compared to Burgundy, said National Geographic. The valley is home to 11 designated grape-growing regions with diverse terroirs, spanning all the way from Portland to Eugene. In recent years, the “cool nights and warm summer days” here have provided the perfect conditions for some “top-notch sparkling wines”. Grape varieties used in champagne, such as pinot meunier, have been “thriving”.

Method Oregon is a non-profit established by a coalition of local producers to ensure high standards and help get their wines on the map. Bottles carrying the stamp must be “100% fermented, bottled, riddled, and disgorged in Oregon”, said National Geographic. Producers must also use the traditional method that requires sparkling wines to go through a “natural secondary fermentation in a bottle” and to be aged for no less than 24 months en tirage (“the crucial stage where wines are aged on yeast”) to develop a complex flavour.

Gran Moraine’s sparkling brut rosé is “exquisite, rich and lovely”, said Clive Pursehouse on Decanter. The delicate wine spent six years en tirage and is bursting with “floral notes of apple blossom, sweet lemon cream, and ripe, fleshy pears”.

But chardonnay remains the “king of Oregon white wines”, said Mike Desimone on Robb Report. For a special occasion, consider splashing out on a bottle from Eyrie Vineyard, where winemaker Jim Maresh produces “small-batch, high-quality wines from estate-grown grapes under his family label”.

When Black women go missing, why does the UK look away?
Tabby Kibugi in The Independent
“When Sarah Everard disappeared” in 2021, writes Tabby Kibugi, “our timelines were filled with photos of her”. When Edna Mmbali Ombakho went missing this February, newsrooms “barely” reacted. This lack of attention illustrates how our “perception of the perfect missing victim is still shaped by race, gender and class”. Cases of missing Black women like Ombakho, who was later found dead, should be treated as “urgent enough to interrupt the news cycle”.

JD Vance’s humiliating failure has left Trump cornered
James Ball in The i Paper
“However bad the Iran conflict has been” for Donald Trump politically, “it has been worse” for his “ambitious” vice president, writes James Ball. By making himself “the face of the peace talks”, J.D. Vance gambled that “he could claim the credit for ending the unpopular war”. But “his mission seems to have ended in failure”. While Trump continues to break “everything he touches”, Vance “is learning that the clean-up operation is harder than he imagined”.

Theatre audiences have forgotten how to behave
Jane Shilling in The Telegraph
The trend for filming theatre curtain calls exemplifies the “boorishness” that has “inexorably infested cultural life”, writes Jane Shilling. “The determination of audiences to invade artistic performance has become relentless”, from “the obligatory standing ovation” to “raucous singalongs”. Among those “behind the footlights”, opinions about curtain calls are “divided”, and some venues encourage filming. But I think it kills “the fragile complicity between performer and audience”, replacing it “with something coarser and more individualistic”.