Chief-Exec.com

Trump threatens to ‘blow up’ all of Iran’s South Pars gasfield if Tehran strikes Qatar
Donald Trump threatened to “massively blow up” the world’s largest gasfield after Israeli strikes on the Iranian site prompted Tehran to step up attacks on energy facilities across the Middle East. Israel’s decision to target the South Pars gasfield on Wednesday marked a major escalation of the war, heightening fears of significant disruption to international energy supplies. Iran promptly retaliated with fresh attacks across the region, including on Qatari liquefied natural gas facilities - infuriating the US president. Oil and European natural gas prices rose sharply, with Brent crude - the international benchmark for oil - up 6 per cent at $114 a barrel. Gas prices jumped 23 per cent. Leading Asian stock markets came under pressure, with the Nikkei 225 falling 3.4 per cent in Japan. The Guardian, March 19

European leaders seek breakthrough on €90bn Ukraine loan blocked by Viktor Orban
EU leaders will meet in Brussels on Thursday hoping to unlock a massive loan for Kyiv, with the much-needed funding ensnared in a standoff between Hungary's Viktor Orban and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky. Moscow's closest partner in the bloc, the nationalist Hungarian leader has long resisted helping Kyiv to repel Russia's invasion, stalling EU aid and repeated rounds of sanctions. This time around, Orban is holding up a 90-billion-euro ($104 billion) loan as leverage in a feud over damage to a pipeline running through Ukraine - which has choked the flow of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. As the Hungarian prime minister leans into anti-EU and anti-Ukrainian narratives ahead of close-fought national elections on April 12 - he appears intent on playing hardball. "No oil, no money," he warned this week. "If President Zelensky wants to get his money from Brussels, then the Druzhba pipeline must be reopened." France 24, March 19

London mayor says Labour must fight next election on promise to rejoin EU
Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has said Labour must fight the next election on a clear manifesto promise to rejoin the European Union, further piling the pressure on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Earlier this week, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, said “there’s an awful lot we can do to improve our trading relations” with the bloc that Britain left in 2020. But in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica published on Wednesday, Khan called on his party’s embattled leader to go further. “I’m quite clear: on the ballot paper of the next general election, a vote for Labour [is] a vote to rejoin the European Union, and we should be unequivocal about the benefits of the European Union,” he said. The Times, March 19

KPMG and Harvey Nichols among employers to have paid less than UK minimum wage
Big Four accountancy firm KPMG, luxury department store Harvey Nichols and well-known retail brands and football clubs are among 400 employers found to have paid workers less than the UK’s statutory minimum wage. The government said it was acting on a commitment in the November Budget to “name and shame” employers caught breaking labour market rules more frequently, as it seeks to step up its enforcement of newly strengthened workers’ rights. The Department for Business and Trade said the employers concerned had repaid more than £7.3mn to around 60,000 workers, with fines of £12.6mn also issued to 389 employers. Football clubs Norwich City and Charlton Athletic were among those named, alongside high street chain Costa, breadmaker Hovis and Walsall Council. Harvey Nichols was named as having failed to pay £7,537 to 83 workers. These companies did not respond to requests for comment. Financial Times, March 19

Pay grows at slowest rate in more than five years
Pay has grown at its slowest rate in more than five years, according to the latest official figures. Earnings - excluding bonuses - grew at an annual rate of 3.8 per cent in the November to January period, down from the previous figure of 4.2 per cent. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at a near five-year high of 5.2 per cent, the Office for National Statistics said, but there was a rise in the number of workers on payrolls last month. The ONS figures come ahead of the latest decision on interest rates from the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, which is expected to keep the cost of borrowing unchanged. Despite the slowdown in pay growth, wages were still rising faster than the rate of price increases. Inflation fell to 3 per cent in January, although the outbreak of the US-Israeli war with Iran has led many analysts to expect the rate to pick up in the months ahead. BBC news, March 19

UK considers FOI clampdown as requests soar
British officials are considering a clampdown on the freedom of information system in a move that would spark backlash from transparency campaigners. Government figures are discussing a reduction in the cost ceiling for processing a request as the number of annual submissions has spiralled, according to people familiar with the situation. The soaring number of requests comes against a backdrop of heavily constrained Whitehall budgets, they added. Under the Freedom of Information Act, introduced in 2000, the cost threshold for complying with a request is set at £600 for central government and £450 for other public bodies, with staff time charged at a flat rate of £25 an hour. This equates to 24 hours of work, or 3.5 working days, for Whitehall departments and 18 hours of work for other government agencies. Officials said that in 2024, the last year for which there is published data, 83,041 requests were received across all monitored bodies in central government - the highest number since monitoring began in 2005. This was an increase of 12,566 requests, or 18 per cent, on the previous year. Financial Times, March 19

Iran conflict turns shipping market into ‘wild west’
The conflict in the Middle East has turned the container shipping sector into a “wild west”, with carriers adding thousands of dollars in extra charges and dumping containers at far-flung ports, according to shipping customers and removal companies. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz following Iranian strikes and fears that Houthi rebels will resume their attacks in the Red Sea have prompted shipping lines to suspend bookings and reroute goods. Fire as a result of debris from aerial strikes on Sunday over the main hub port in Dubai, Jebel Ali, has triggered further cancellations and congestion at safer ports. The largest shipping groups, including MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd, have told customers they reserve the right to invoke a 19th-century rule to allow them to leave containers at the nearest available port at their client’s expense. Charges for shipping containers, meanwhile, have risen as much as fourfold on certain routes thanks to war-risk insurance costs and fuel surcharges. Financial Times, March 18

Europe must prepare for drone strikes by terrorists and criminals, warns Zelenskyy
European nations should prepare for attacks by non-state actors including criminal networks, terror groups and lone attackers as drone technology advances, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned. The Ukrainian president said it was no longer just “a wealthy madman like Putin” who could afford mass attacks as he demonstrated the latest technology to British MPs and peers. Zelenskyy said the regimes in Moscow and Tehran were “brothers in hatred”, with Russia using Iranian-designed Shahed drones, as well as its own variants of them, to attack critical infrastructure in Ukraine. His UK visit came as Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the west must not “lose focus” on Ukraine amid concerns that the Iran conflict had revived Russia’s ailing economy by increasing oil revenue and Kyiv could miss out on air defence systems being deployed to the Middle East instead. The Guardian, March 17

Suspicions grow that China is exploiting FOI laws to gather UK security data
British officials are concerned that China is exploiting the UK’s freedom of information legislation to collate unclassified data that risks revealing sensitive information. Government figures believe they have detected a pattern of requests relating to the UK’s defence and national security, raising suspicions that Beijing may be behind a significant proportion of them, according to people familiar with the matter. Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, the flagship transparency legislation introduced by former prime minister Tony Blair in 2000, those submitting requests are obliged to give their real name and a correspondence address. In practice, however, proof of identity is not required and the conditions are often overlooked by government bodies, making it difficult to analyse the true origins of requests. Financial Times, March 18

Cuba restores electricity network, vows 'unbreakable resistance' to US pressure
Cuba's leader on Tuesday said the US would face "unbreakable resistance" if it tries to take over the impoverished island nation, as communist authorities scrambled to fully restore electricity across the country. Cuba's government is under increasingly crushing pressure, with Washington enforcing an oil blockade and openly stating it wants to end the nearly seven-decade-old US standoff with the one-party communist state. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Cuba's decision announced this week to let exiles invest and own businesses did not go far enough to allow free-market reforms that the Trump administration demands. "What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It's not going to fix it. So they've got some big decisions to make," Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of the country's ruling party, told reporters at the White House. President Donald Trump, who has heaped pressure on Cuba's communist government, said on Monday he would "take" Cuba, adding: "We'll be doing something with Cuba very soon." But his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel was defiant in the face of Washington's threats. France 24, March 18

AI chatbots can help abusers stalk and harass women, Refuge warns
AI chatbots can help stalkers target and harass women, a charity has warned. Chatbots helped a potential stalker who wanted to harass a victim without their knowledge, according to Refuge. The tools also gave advice on how to evade police investigations. Refuge declined to name the chatbots for legal reasons. Emma Pickering, the head of technology-facilitated abuse at Refuge, said: “Chatbots have given really harmful information [when we] asked things such as: ‘How do we stalk someone without them knowing?’ ‘How do we send harmful posts without it being traced back to us?’ They’ve given us information and they’ve even gone further, saying: ‘Have you thought about sending from an obscure email address and getting a burner phone so it won’t come back to your mobile?’” Pickering said that survivors of abuse are reporting that “perpetrators have been able to put together quite a package of harm … monitoring them, tracking them” using the chatbots. The research is part of a report from the universities of Durham and Swansea called “Invisible No More”, which details how chatbots are being used to facilitate violence against women. The Times, March 18

Teens sue Musk's xAI over Grok's pornographic images of them
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company is facing a lawsuit from teenagers who say the company facilitated child pornography by allowing the creation of sexually explicit images of them. The lawsuit against xAI was filed on Monday in a federal California court by three young women whose images and videos were altered by a Grok user without their knowledge to show them nude or in otherwise overtly sexual ways. Grok is a chatbot developed by xAI and hosted on Musk's social media platform X. xAI did not respond to a request for comment made via its parent company. The legal action is part of the fallout since last year's controversial release of new Grok features that X called "spicy" mode. Lawyers for the young women said Grok's ability to alter images and video had been created and released by xAI solely to drive use of the chatbot and X. They likened the way images of the young women were changed to "a rag doll brought to life through the dark arts". "xAI - and its founder Elon Musk - saw a business opportunity," the complaint says. "They knew Grok could produce such results, including by using the images and videos of children, and publicly released it anyway." The young women are seeking unspecified damages, as well as an immediate order barring Grok from creating such images. BBC news, March 16

Morocco awarded Afcon title after CAF overturns result
Morocco have been declared the winners of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations after the Confederation of African Football overturned the result of the final following Senegal's controversial walk-off. Senegal beat Morocco 1-0 in the final on 18 January in a match which was overshadowed when the Senegalese players refused to play after the hosts were awarded a stoppage-time penalty with the match goalless. Following a delay of about 17 minutes, the players did eventually return and Brahim Diaz's penalty was saved before Senegal's Pape Gueye scored an extra-time winner. However, that result has now been overturned after a decision by an appeal board at African football's governing body. A statement from Caf said that Senegal is "declared to have forfeited the final match" with the "result of the match being recorded as 3-0 in favour" of Morocco. The Senegalese Football Federation said it would appeal against Caf's decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, calling it "an unfair, unpreced