This morning, BP announced oil trading results in 1Q 2026 are expected to be ‘exceptional’ compared to the ‘weak’ performance of the previous quarter.

BP said that the “ongoing situation in the Middle East” had “heightened volatility in crude oil, natural gas and refined products prices.” So, yes, the price shock and volatility have helped its profits.

The surge comes with Brent crude averaging $81.13 per barrel in the first quarter of 2026. That is up from $63.73 per barrel in the fourth quarter of 2025.

BP hails ‘exceptional’ quarter for oil traders as Iran war stokes volatility https://t.co/gjME3EpQMD

— Financial Times (@FT) April 14, 2026

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Shell expects a similar boost from the war. Also, TotalEnergies traders made more than $1bn in March by hoarding crude from the UAE and Oman.

BP and others are wart profiteers

Five leading oil companies, BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies, have recorded profits of almost half a trillion dollars (US$467 billion) between 2021 and 2026, according to an analysis from Global Witness.

Already in March, professor Nick Butler, a former Downing Street energy adviser who worked at BP for almost three decades, said on LBC that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz could create a physical oil shortage, leading to rationing.

Meanwhile in the UK, Starmer announced £53m for vulnerable households who rely on heating oil in making from the very same crisis mid-March – a pittance if compared to the profits BP and its rivals are expected to make and already made this decade.

So, the winners of the US/Israel/UK war on Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza are the oil and arms traders. 

West Asia burns. BP counts its “exceptional” profits.

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By The Canary

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Afghan women fleeing one of the world’s most extreme systems of gender persecution are being denied safe asylum in the UK. And this is undermining the UK’s commitments on Women, Peace and Security, a new briefing warns.

Published by Amnesty International UK and the Gender Action for Peace and Security network, the briefing finds that asylum policies framed as restoring “control” are instead designed to deter people from seeking protection, shutting out women and girls escaping Taliban repression.

Sharp drop in successful Afghan asylum claims

Recognition rates for Afghan asylum claims have fallen sharply from 96% to 34% since the current government took office. At least 370 Afghan women and girls had asylum claims refused in 2025 alone.

Campaigners say the consequences are stark. A country that claims global leadership on women’s rights is turning away women fleeing systematic oppression.

Afghanistan is one of the most extreme examples of gender persecution in the world. Women and girls have been erased from public life, barred from education, excluded from work, stripped of autonomy, and silenced by sweeping restrictions on their movement and expression.

Many are effectively confined to their homes under threat of punishment. This is the reality women are fleeing. Yet current UK asylum policies are denying protection to many of them.

Karla McLaren, Amnesty UK’s head of government affairs, said:

Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman. Women have been systematically erased from public life, denied education, autonomy, and even the most basic right to be seen or heard.

Yet as the Taliban tightens its grip, the proportion of women granted safety here is falling. That is indefensible.

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The fact that Afghan women are being denied refuge here, despite clear evidence of the brutality they face under the Taliban, shows the extent of the moral and practical collapse in the UK’s asylum decision-making.

Denying protection to women who so clearly should be recognised as refugees, preventing them from rebuilding their lives with dignity, and deliberately subjecting them to years of uncertainty is not strength, but cruelty.

Ministers cannot claim international leadership on women’s rights while turning away women fleeing persecution. The UK’s treatment of Afghan women seeking protection is a total betrayal of the principles it claims to stand for.

A system designed to deter, not protect

The briefing identifies a pattern of policies making it harder for refugees to secure safety in the UK, with disproportionate harm to women and girls. These include:

• Rising refusal rates, including for Afghans despite well-documented persecution.
• Plans to cut refugee status from five years to 30 months, increasing instability.
• Proposals that could delay settlement for up to 20 years, trapping refugees in prolonged insecurity.
• Ending refugee family reunion, closing a vital safe route used predominantly by women and children.

Taken together, campaigners warn these measures amount to a system designed to deter people from seeking asylum rather than protecting those entitled to it.

The UK is the UN Security Council penholder on the Women, Peace and Security agenda. This means it’s responsible for leading global efforts to protect women and girls affected by conflict.

However, the organisations warn that current asylum policies directly undermine these commitments. Denying protection to women fleeing gender-based persecution, including forced marriage, sexual violence, and exclusion from education and work, contradicts the UK’s stated leadership on the global stage.

At a time of rising global conflict and displacement, campaigners say the UK should be strengthening protection, not restricting it.

The organisations behind the briefing call on the UK government to:

• Reinstate refugee family reunion rules.
• Repeal restrictive asylum decision-making provisions.
• Abandon plans that weaken protection for recognised refugees.
• Expand safe routes for women and girls fleeing conflict.

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By The Canary

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The Zionist new owners of the Telegraph — already a hard-right, pro-Israel rag — have made support for Israel compulsory among its staff. Despite claiming ‘free speech’ as a core value, support for Israel is also “core” and non-negotiable — and second on its list of priorities.

Germany’s Axel Springer media is taking over the paper after the Labour government of ‘Zionist without qualification’ Keir Starmer approved the buy-out. Group boss Mathias Döpfner has told staff, including journalists, that the values of the group’s founders are:

1. …freedom, freedom of expression, the rule of law, and democracy.
2. …the right of Israel to exist and oppos[ing] all forms of antisemitism.
3. …advocat[ing] the transatlantic alliance between the United States and Europe.

For good measure, Döpfner made clear that he expects his writers to toe this partisan line completely, telling them that there is “no such thing as neutral journalism”. He expects the Telegraph’s ‘journalism’ to be “pluralistic and surprising, fair, and fact-based” — but clearly it must always be pro-Israel.

The Telegraph rejects both discrimination and Palestinians

A journalist at the rag told Owen Johns that:

To be firmly told by our new parent company-to-be’s CEO that the second most important guiding principle is affirming the right of a country committing genocide and ethnic cleansing is more than a little concerning. It also raises the question of how any reporting from the paper can be considered factual if that is our core principle.

While the paper’s principle list says it “rejects” “all forms of discrimination”, this is not compatible with support for an apartheid ethno-supremacist state still attacking, and stealing land from, its neighbours as well as committing genocide against the Palestinian people that it openly wants gone. The list also says it rejects “political and religious extremism”, but that is not compatible with the ethno-fascism of an occupation that has just passed a death penalty law that only applies to Palestinians and routinely rapes and tortures the thousands of civilians it holds in indefinite detention.

Rather, as Jones notes:

Instead, “oppose all forms of antisemitism” is fused directly with “support the right of Israel to exist.” That conflation matters. Because we know that defenders of Israel have repeatedly blurred the line between antisemitism and opposition to the actions of the Israeli state.

The group’s late founder made explicitly clear how he expects his companies — and indeed European society as a whole – to apply this ‘support’ for Israel. Axel Springer — in a quote still featured on the corporation’s website — said that Israel is “not just any state” and that:

It is the task of our generation to stand firmly by Israel’s side, even if this causes difficulties for our policies elsewhere… [Israel] does not need encouragement, but advocacy… [this is] a German duty.

So committed was Springer to the cause of the ethno-state that his company still boasts, on the same page, that if it wouldn’t have had an adverse impact on sales, he would have “print[ed] his papers in Hebrew”. In case the point isn’t clear enough, it then adds:

At the end of the 1960s, a research institute discovered that there was one single topic on which Axel Springer’s newspapers all took the same stance – namely Israel. Axel Springer dealt confidently with such accusations: “Does anyone want to turn that into an accusation? That’s something I carry with great composure.”

His successor Döpfner, clearly cut from the same cloth, told employees at the group’s German companies that anyone who had an issue with the company flying the Israeli flag should “look for a new job”. But even that was too wishy-washy. Döpfner later said that his political worldview was:

Zionism über alles

which means, “Zionism above everything”.

‘Palestinian’ is ‘antisemitism’

He also described support for Palestine and opposition to Israel’s Gaza genocide as “an almost global wave of antisemitism”, and condemned TikTok’s users for posting millions of comments supporting the Palestinians but only a few tens of thousands “standing by Israel”. “Free Palestine”, said Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor recipient Döpfner, equated to “pro-Hamas”. Döpfner has also amplified false atrocity propaganda about the events of 7 October 2023, including the long-debunked ‘beheaded babies’ lie.

His reference to TikTok is significant. When the US Israel lobby realised that TikTok’s mostly young user base was using the platform to share information about Israel’s genocide and crimes against humanity, its first reaction was to have the US government ban it.

However, it then solved the issue by the ultra-Zionist billionaire Ellison family buying its operations outside China — along with US news outlet CBS. No more pro-Palestinian ‘problem’ in either of them. The purchase of the Telegraph was not necessary to quell any pro-Palestinian output — there was none. But it forms part of the lobby’s push for control of UK ‘mainstream’ media and this country’s political narrative.

Far-right media moves further right

It also bodes ill for freedom of speech in the UK. Keir Starmer is already waging war on pro-Palestinian speech, journalism and activism, but the Springer purchase of the Telegraph will only push that even further. German tabloid Bild, one of the company’s main media outlets, has — as Al Jazeera reported — relentlessly demonised anti-genocide demonstrators as “antisemites”, “mobs” and “Israel-haters”, both in Germany and in the US. Germany’s state enforcers treat peaceful anti-genocide protesters even more brutally and dishonestly than in the US and UK.

For the Telegraph, the buy-out means “business as usual, but even more intensely”. For what survives of free speech and democracy in the UK it is a very bad sign indeed.

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By Skwawkbox

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A top Israeli university has found that Israel’s leaders and press have emptied the term antisemitism of meaning by using the it as a cheap tool to attack those critical of the settler-colonial state. Tel Aviv University’s global antisemitism report is truly damning — though not without its limitations in regard to Israel’s demonstrably genocidal actions. The assessment even called Israeli government and media behaviour “absurd”.

The study, titled ‘Antisemitism Worldwide; report for 2025‘, said:

Israeli politicians and media have, particularly in recent months, continuously expanded the scope of what qualifies as antisemitism, at times in absurd or hasty ways. In doing so, they do not win arguments or silence critics, as they perhaps believe; rather, they discredit a crucial fight by politicizing it and emptying it of analytic meaning.

The authors stipulated:

The label of antisemitism is harsh and should be applied only after careful consideration and based on solid criteria.

From an elite Israeli university this is particularly damning — even more so when you read the next passage:

The war crimes committed by Hamas justified an unwavering military campaign as well as
retribution against those responsible, including their accomplices. This, foremost, as a matter
of serving the cause of justice.

This historically dubious framing indicates strongly that the authors still hold to Israel’s colonialist state ideology. Claiming a genocidal assault on Palestinians is qualified by the 7 October attack as a pursuit of “justice” is beyond the pale. Yet even these scholars — with these views — concede that the Israeli press and media have diminished the term antisemitism to the level of absurdity.

Shut down the ministry!

In another section, the scholars blast the government of Israel for “draining” the term of meaning to such a degree that they caused harm to the fight against antisemitism:

The government did not carry out even a single significant and effective action and often caused harm. Israeli politicians at the highest levels steadily expanded the scope of the term ‘antisemitism,’ including through cynical and hasty declarations, drained it of meaning, and damaged the struggle against Jew-hatred.

They urged that the ministry for combating antisemitism, which has “failed in its mission”, should be closed:

and its authorities and budgets transferred to Israel’s embassies and consulates, because only ongoing contact, on the ground, with Jewish communities, law-enforcement authorities, and educators, carried out by professionals and based on attentive listening and determined activity, can contribute to the security of the communities.

There is strong sense that the report authors are liberal Zionists attacking the far-right Benyamin Netanyahu regime. But this arguably adds to its power given the withering tone of its findings. And the report also lays into the antisemitism of supporters of Netanyahu’s most high-profile backer: US president Donald Trump.

Trumpian antisemitism

The report’s framing is once again coloured by the author’s apparent commitment to Zionism. For example they say:

The Middle Eastern policies of Trump’s two administrations have so far been, as opposed to a number of careless and dangerous statements he made, by and large commendable.

By this they mean, for example, Trump’s first-term recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his aggression towards Iran. Yet they still found:

Trump is also the president who has tolerated, as no contemporary president has, deep seated, loathsome antisemites within his camp, and continues to do so for cynical political reasons.

Adding:

The result is a new culture of everything-goes that is undermining the sense that Jews have had for decades that their future in America is secure.

The report shows us several things. One is that the Gaza genocide and Israeli aggression have caused a crisis at the heart of Zionism. Scholars like these are being forced to tie themselves in ideological knots to stay afloat. And it looks bloody obvious. Zionism’s worst enemy is itself. Because like any colonialist ethnonationalism, it cannot help but contradict itself.

Another is that, as many of us have long suspected, Zionists in Israel and their fellow travelers abroad have reduced a term which should be carefully and properly used to describe a vile form of racism to catch-all slur. And in doing so they have made it harder to face real antisemitism head-on — putting Jewish people in more danger.

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By Joe Glenton

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Far-right propaganda outlets are salivating over a new immigration report from an investment bank – that’s mainly because it fearmongers about the Green Party, which has been surging in recent months and presenting a real challenge to Reform UK.

Because the actual report isn’t public, it can’t face proper outside scrutiny. But as a Green spokesperson insisted:

These figures are made up nonsense and we’ve been given no idea how they are calculated.

Green Party: ‘we won’t scapegoat migrants’

The report comes from Simon French, the “chief economist at Panmure Liberum”, which calls itself “the UK’s largest Independent Investment Bank”. And it claims that a Green election win in 2029 would push the country’s population from around 71.5 million to 75.9 million by 2034 (via net migration of about 900,000 a year).

French is a Times columnist who previously worked in government and “had a central role” in pushing through cuts. And he once wrote about “taking a chainsaw to red tape”. But right-wing rags hope we’ll just accept his estimates on immigration numbers without any scrutiny (as they did themselves).

The Green Party has refused to do so, though. Because a spokesperson told the Telegraph that, while it’s “not at all clear” how French got his figures, it looks like he based them:

apparently, on an ‘open borders’ approach, which is not our current policy

They stressed that:

The Greens support a fair and managed migration system – successive governments have presided over a broken and unjust system.

Responding to the Mail, meanwhile, a Green spokesperson placed the focus firmly on economic injustice, saying:

People are concerned about the impacts of immigration because of a massive affordability crisis, but unlike other parties we won’t scapegoat migrants for the unfairness created by our rigged economic system.

An investment bank wouldn’t want you railing against the economic system, would it?

Despite not knowing where French got his numbers from, we do know that even the Tories brought net migration up to 944,000 in 2023. So even if we believed French’s prediction, it wouldn’t be the kind of number the UK has never seen before.

It’s important to remember, of course, that people from other countries contribute strongly to our economy (something the Green Party has openly insisted). It’s also important to remember why immigration happens at all. Because as the Canary has previously explained, the UK has:

• An ageing population.
• Low birth rates.
• Skills shortages.
• A massive underinvestment problem.
• A longstanding addiction to destructive interference abroad which has played a big part in pushing people out of their homes in the first place.

As Green Party leader Zack Polanski has made completely clear, the focus of our rage should not be on ordinary people seeking a new life in the UK. It should be on the putrid economic system that, for at least five decades, has been decimating communities across the country via public spending cuts, with devastating consequences.

In December 2025, Polanski insisted:

We shouldn’t have a race to the bottom on migration. We should have a race to the top on public services!

He’s absolutely right. But investment banks and elitist propaganda outlets are happy with the way the current economic system works, so it shouldn’t surprise us in the slightest that they prefer to spread hate and fear rather than compassion and hope.

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By Ed Sykes

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Under state ownership, Iranians pay so little for oil consumption it’s actually a problem. This is somewhat amusing given it shows that nationalisation can dramatically reduce people’s energy bills. Just in Iran’s situation, the price is too low, meaning the government should take more profit and invest it in industries such as education and healthcare.

As a disclaimer for those jumping the gun, this article focuses on only this aspect of Iranian policy, it’s not upholding the overall system of an authoritarian theocracy.

Why is energy so cheap in Iran?

State ownership combined with government subsidies means Iranians pay as little as £0.021 per litre of fuel. The average global price is £1.09, demonstrating how remarkably inexpensive Iranian oil is.

Of course, the cheap oil is also partly because Iran has the third largest reserves in the world.

The issue is that such cheap energy leads to overconsumption. It’s why even under public ownership, finite resources should not be free or too cheap.

Iran’s energy intensity index is one of the highest globally. Plus, 20% of Iran’s daily consumption is made up of oil smuggled abroad and sold to other countries because of the low price at home.

Low cost energy means reduced expenditure for agriculture, delivery and for businesses and people. It’s generally a good thing. But rather than making it too low, profit can be used for public investment in other areas.

Before privatisation, nationalised energy in the UK made significant profit for the public purse, meaning the government can spend more with less risk of inflation.

Green energy over oil

That said, it’s clear that renewable energy is not only cheaper to produce but addresses the climate crisis. We need to move away from oil, no matter what the corporate and state luddites say.

In 2025, Earth Overshoot Day landed on 25 July. That’s the day when, globally, we use the amount of resources that the planet can replenish for the next year — our ecological budget.

This is largely due to consumption of fossil fuels. If we changed to 100% renewables globally, which is entirely possible, it would bring the date back six months.

But Iran does show how much state (or common) ownership can reduce prices for individuals in a society. Amusingly, it’s actually too cheap.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

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In the runup to the local elections, we’ve been reporting on the horrorshow that is Reform UK’s campaign. Most of our articles have focused on candidate controversies, and these stories have somehow gotten worse and worse by the day.

For the latest example of this, we present Aaron Lee Taylor:

NEW: ‘Hitler was right’, says one of Reform’s top activists, Aaron Lee Taylor

Taylor has campaigned from Reform’s head office and twice met Nigel Farage, has frequently shared material online that promotes Nazi Germany.https://t.co/om5KugSPN9

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— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) April 14, 2026

That’s Adolf Hitler, by the way.

The worst Hitler.

The worst person full stop, arguably.

Come and join the Reform UK Party

As Hope not Hate have reported:

Aaron Lee Taylor, who volunteered in Reform’s head office and twice met Nigel Farage has frequently shared material online that promotes Nazi Germany.

Here’s an example of the sort of thing he was posting:

This is something Taylor tweeted on 1 November 2025:

If it’s black send it back

If it’s brown shoot it down

If it’s white it’s perfectly alright (to stay in the UK)

These posts were from late last year. Earlier this year, he began volunteering at Reform’s HQ and taking pics with the top brassHope not Hate added:

His most recent post in support of Reform was on April 3rd, when he shared an Easter message from the party. We understand that he is now no longer a member of the party. What remains unclear is why Reform appealed to Taylor, an unabashed fan of Hitler.

Yes, very unclear.

We probably shouldn’t be laughing about the UK’s leading political party being up to its elbows in Nazis, but there are two things that could be described as darkly amusing:

• Reform’s laughable vetting process (which they assure us exists).
• The fact that Aaron Lee Taylor is a completely ridiculous figure.

The following image shows Nigel Farage meeting Taylor at the activist’s tanning salon:

That’s right – ultra-racist Aaron Lee Taylor has his own tanning salon.

Saying that, we suppose he’s far from the only orange supremacist in the world:

Does anyone believe Trump‘s BS explanation for posting himself as Jesus Christ?

“Well it wasn’t depicted… It was me, I did post it. And I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross. There is a Red Cross worker there that we support and only the FAKE NEWS could… pic.twitter.com/TwDTvSWnwe

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— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) April 13, 2026

Vetting away with it

As Hope not Hate reported, Zia Yusuf said in March that Reform have “the best vetting in the country”. Here’s a picture of Yusuf with Aaron Lee Taylor (tweet taken from Taylor’s Twitter feed):

We’re well aware that Reform’s vetting is non-existent, because we’ve reported the following:

• Reform candidate wants to ‘tear down’ the NHS.
• Reform candidate exposed as a horny nincompoop.
• Another Reform candidate has praised Enoch Powell.
• Reform UK accused of ‘nil vetting’ as another racist candidate exposed.
• Video emerges of Reform’s ‘Nazi salute’ candidate drink driving.

To be fair, ‘non-existent’ is the charitable reading of this nonsense ‘vetting’ process.

The less charitable takeaway would be that this bunch of racists are purposefully enlisting the absolute worst of the worst.

Featured image via Hope not Hate

By Willem Moore

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Iran’s national football team plans to participate in the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the US despite ongoing military and political tensions.

The national team coach, Amir Ghalenoei, told the Iranian news agency, IRNA:

There is currently no reason preventing us from participating. God willing, we will participate.

He added that the Iranian Football Federation is actively continuing preparations, including playing friendly matches in preparation for the tournament.

In the same context, Iran sports minister, Ahmad Doniamali, expressed optimism about the possibility of participation, provided the ceasefire between the warring parties holds.

He said:

The more normal the situation becomes, the more likely participation is.

Doniamali added, in statements carried by IRNA on Monday, that “the more normal the situation becomes, the more likely participation is”, indicating that the decision is linked to political and security stability.

Iran prioritises player and coaching staff safety

In the same context, the national team coach stressed the need to ensure the safety of the players and coaching staff should the tournament be held in the US, given the current circumstances.

These developments coincide with direct negotiations held in Islamabad between Iran and the US at the end of last week, which failed to produce any tangible results.

The final decision regarding participation is expected to be referred to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

US president, Donald Trump, had expressed doubts about Iran’s participation in the World Cup, while reports indicated that FIFA rejected an Iranian proposal to move the team’s matches to Mexico.

Iran’s national team is scheduled to play its group stage matches against Belgium, New Zealand and Egypt in Seattle and Los Angeles.

Featured image via the Gulf Observer

By Alaa Shamali

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