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BANGKOK — Twenty Thai crew members of a cargo ship attacked in the crucial Strait of Hormuz arrived in Thailand on Monday, with three of their colleagues still stranded on the vessel in the Gulf.

The Thai-registered Mayuree Naree was hit by two projectiles on Wednesday while transiting through the Gulf waterway, after departing a port in the United Arab Emirates.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had struck the Thai ship, as well as a Liberia-flagged vessel, in the strait because they had ignored “warnings”.

The 20 sailors landed at Thailand’s main international airport early Monday morning and were immediately escorted away by officials without speaking to gathered media.

The wife of one of the returned crew, who gave her name as Bass, told reporters she was still waiting to see her husband after the ordeal.

“We are all afraid, but they are employees — if they refuse to go (out to sea), they won’t get paid,” the 32-year-old woman said.

“I don’t know where they went or when they will return home. The company hasn’t told me anything,” she added.

‘Highest priority’

Bass said she had only spoken with her husband over Facebook Messenger and had brought their one-year-old son to the airport at her husband’s request.

AFP journalists saw the returning crew members board a bus after arriving at the airport.

When the Mayuree Naree was struck last week, Bass’s husband was only able to grab his phones before fleeing, she told reporters.

He had apologised to his wife for leaving onboard a token from his son — a small pillow.

“I want (the company) to be sure during this war situation that the ship will be safe when it goes out,” she said.

“I want them to look at the employees like their own family. If one of them were their family, how would they decide?”

The vessel’s owner Precious Shipping said Monday that the firm would provide “welfare support for the crew, including medical examinations and mental health assessments”, according to a statement.

Its “highest priority” remained the “continued efforts to locate the three crew members who are still missing”, it added.

The company said last week that the three crew were “believed to be trapped in the engine room”, which was damaged in the attack.

Precious Shipping did not answer questions about the three crew from AFP on Monday.

Thailand was seeking assistance for them from two other nations, foreign ministry deputy spokeswoman Maratee Andamo told reporters.

The Omani navy rescued the 20 sailors on Wednesday, the Thai navy said last week.

Since strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran more than two weeks ago ignited the Middle East war, the Islamic republic has launched its own attacks against its oil-exporting neighbours.

The strikes have threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — through which about a fifth of global oil supplies usually pass — and have plunged the global energy economy into crisis. — AFP

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TEHRAN — President Donald Trump urged NATO partners and China to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the critical conduit for crude that Iran has effectively closed, as major economic players began releasing oil reserves on Monday to ward off supply disruptions.

Global oil prices have surged by 40 to 50 percent after Iran choked off the waterway and attacked energy and shipping industry targets in the Gulf in retaliation for the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic.

Crude prices were hovering around $100 on Monday as the Middle East war entered its third week, with Israel saying it still has “thousands of targets in Iran”, where it was also “identifying new targets every day”.

Trump said the United States was in discussions with Iran but that Tehran was not ready for a deal to end the war, although the Islamic republic’s foreign minister had earlier denied any talks with Washington.

“I don’t think they’re ready. But they are getting pretty close,” Trump said.

The US president had called on countries including China, France, Japan, South Korea and Britain at the weekend to send ships to escort tankers through the strait.

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump told the Financial Times on Sunday. Unlike the United States, Europe and China are heavily dependent on the Gulf for oil imports.

Trump threatened to delay a planned summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month if Beijing does not assist with reopening the strait.

He also warned that no response or a negative reply to his request would be “very bad for the future of NATO”.

But Tokyo and Canberra both said they were not planning deployments.

Iran warning

Trump’s comments came after Iran warned other countries against getting involved in the war, which has spread across the Middle East.

In a phone conversation with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot, Tehran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi called on other countries to “refrain from any action that could lead to escalation and expansion of the conflict”.

Arguing that the US security umbrella in the region was “inviting rather than deterring trouble”, Araghchi on X urged neighbouring countries “to expel foreign aggressors”.

Iran has launched waves of attacks on countries in the Middle East that host US forces, and Italy’s military said a drone attack at Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait — which hosts both US and Italian forces — destroyed an unmanned aircraft belonging to Italy but caused no casualties.

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, sought to play down the attack — the second on an Italian base in the Middle East this week — insisting: “We are not at war with anyone.”

Iraqi authorities meanwhile said rockets wounded five people at Baghdad’s airport, which houses a US diplomatic facility, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said about 700 missiles and 3,600 drones had been fired at US and Israeli targets so far.

Saudi Arabia intercepted more than 60 drones since midnight, according to a tally of defence ministry figures released on Monday, while Dubai airport suspended flights briefly after a “drone-related incident” sparked a fire nearby.

And French President Emmanuel Macron told Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian it was “unacceptable” to target French interests after an Iranian-designed drone killed a French soldier in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

The war has also spread to Lebanon, where Israel launched a new strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Sunday.

Energy markets

On the economic front, the International Energy Agency said members will begin releasing 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves, with Asia Oceania nations to make stocks available immediately, and Europe and the Americas follow in the weeks to come.

Japan, which depends on the Middle East for 95 percent of its oil imports, said Monday in a notice in its official government gazette that the level of oil reserves in the country “is being lowered”.

The issuance of the notice compels managers of oil reserves to release part of their stockpile to meet the new standard.

The blockade of Hormuz has been felt across the globe, with Australia officials urging the public against price-gouging and panic buying as prices soar, while India restaurants were forced to adapt their menus to save cooking gas.

On the outskirts of Sydney, landscaper Emma Futterleib, who drives up to 500 km a week, told AFP “there’s definitely some penny pinching going on”.

“It hurts the budget, that’s for sure,” she said, adding she was “trying to be a bit careful on how much we are spending on groceries.”

In Tehran, some residents sought to restore some normalcy at the weekend compared to the start of the war on February 28.

Traffic was busier than last week and some cafes and restaurants had reopened, as had more than a third of stalls in the Tajrish bazaar, a popular shopping hub, with Nowruz, the Persian New Year, just days away.

Some shoppers queued at ATMs to withdraw cash. Online operations at Bank Melli, one of the country’s largest, had been paralysed in recent days.

It was a similar story outside the capital. In an interview from Tonekabon, a city in Mazandaran province on the Caspian Sea, 49-year-old Ali told AFP that shops were open and crowded despite steep price rises.

“Only the main square is closed every night, and government demonstrations take place,” he said, adding that only Iran’s domestic intranet was working, without outside connections.

More than 1,200 people have been killed by US and Israeli strikes, according to Iranian health ministry figures that could not be independently verified.

The UN refugee agency says up to 3.2 million people have been displaced in Iran. — AFP

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CHINA’S main economic indicators fared better than forecast to start the year, in a sign that momentum was improving before the war in Iran roiled the outlook for global growth and inflation.

Industrial production climbed 6.3% in the January-February period from a year ago, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday. That’s the fastest growth since September, a performance that likely benefited from a surprising surge in exports early this year.

Other segments of the economy that are more reliant on domestic demand also got off to a stronger start than expected. Retail sales rose 2.8% in the first two months — more than triple their gain in December — while fixed-asset investment unexpectedly expanded 1.8% after contracting for the first time on record in 2025.

“While risks to the outlook have increased amid geopolitical tensions and disruptions to global trade and energy markets, the latest figures indicate that China entered the year with a firmer growth footing than previously thought,” said Hao Zhou, chief economist at Guotai Junan International in Hong Kong. “This should help cushion the economy against external shocks in the near term.”

The figures provide an encouraging snapshot of the world’s second-biggest economy this year, after it ended 2025 with the slowest growth since the reopening from Covid lockdowns in late 2022. As domestic consumption and investment cooled, gross domestic product growth decelerated in the fourth quarter to 4.5% from a year earlier.

But in the past two weeks, the widening conflict in the Middle East has upended energy markets and caused a new disruption to trade. While China is less vulnerable to an oil price shock than other major economies in Asia, its export machine is exposed to the threats to global growth and inflation. 

Higher fuel and raw material costs could also squeeze profit margins of manufacturers already under pressure from cutthroat competition. 

Chinese government bonds declined across the curve after the upbeat data, and as fears of inflation sweep through markets following the spike in oil prices caused by the Iran war. The yield on 30-year bonds rose to the highest since August 2024, with the offshore yuan maintaining its 0.1% gain versus the dollar.

The improvement across the economy will likely delay the rollout of stimulus as policymakers assess the fast-changing situation in the Middle East. Economists polled by Bloomberg in late February expected a cut to the policy interest rate and banks’ required reserves by the end of March, but the likelihood of a later reduction is rising.

“The biggest surprise would be the positive increase in FAI,” said Serena Zhou, senior China economist at Mizuho Securities in Hong Kong. “Such upside surprises may delay the timing of the rate cut we’ve been expecting,” she said, adding that they had been forecasting a decrease by the end of March. 

Prior to the latest report, China’s investment had been contracting on a monthly basis since mid-2025. Economists have explained the downturn by pointing to a combination of factors, including weakening business confidence as well as a potential adjustment made to correct past over-reporting in the statistics. Government spending on infrastructure also slowed as authorities focused on repaying debt.

Now a nascent shift appears to be underway. Infrastructure investment surged 11.4% in the first two months from a year ago — the fastest increase for the period since 2021. 

That could be a result of authorities embarking on construction projects delayed from late 2025, when the growth target already appeared within reach. 

Other details of China’s macroeconomic data:

• Property investment plunged 11.1% in the first two months from a year ago, a narrower decline than the 19.3% drop predicted by economists
• The urban unemployment rate went up to 5.3%, worse than every forecast in a Bloomberg survey

Manufacturing investment also reversed declines and grew 3.1%. Higher raw material prices were partially behind the turnaround, according to Mizuho’s Xue, with non-ferrous metals like copper rallying in the past few months. 

“Whether there is a recovery in real demand — it remains too early to tell,” she said. 

China usually publishes combined figures for January and February to smooth out distortions caused by the irregular timing of the Lunar New Year holiday.

A detailed breakdown of retail data showed demand for alcohol and cigarettes, communication equipment and jewellery drove the rise, while car purchases continued to plunge.

It’s still a question if the recovery in consumer spending is sustainable. The government earlier announced that it’s trimming subsidies for consumer goods purchases to 250 billion yuan (US$36 billion or RM142.59 billion) this year from 300 billion yuan in 2025, while maintaining the meagre pace of increases in basic pension payouts.

Beijing lowered its annual economic growth target to 4.5%-5% — the least ambitious goal since 1991, though from a much larger base of gross domestic product. While exports were surprisingly strong in the first two months of 2026, the outlook now hinges in part on the duration and intensity of the war, which began with US and Israeli strikes against Iran on Feb 28.

So far, authorities have adopted a cautious approach, choosing to observe how the situation unfolds instead of rushing out new policies. Earlier this month, the government unveiled a slightly scaled back fiscal stimulus plan for this year. 

Chinese leaders are known for delivering economic goals they set for themselves, but how they achieve the more modest target this year will be key. The country’s growing reliance on exports to drive growth is fuelling tensions with trading partners and failing to benefit households. 

“In January and February, the main economic indicators showed a marked rebound, and the economy was off to a good start,” the NBS said in a statement accompanying the data release. “But we also need to see that the impact is deepening from changes in the external environment, and geopolitical risks keep rising.” — BLOOMBERG

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WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump (picture) said Sunday he had the authority to impose duties despite the US Supreme Court last month striking down his global tariffs.

“I have the absolute right to charge TARIFFS in another form, and have already started to do so,” he said in a long post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on US imports via executive order shortly after the Supreme Court ruling.

Washington launched new trade probes last week into 60 economies including China, the EU and Japan, which will look into “failures to take action on forced labor” and whether they burden or restrict US commerce.

Trump’s post came hours after Beijing urged Washington to “immediately correct its erroneous ways” as the two countries began a new round of negotiations.

Beijing’s commerce ministry called the latest US investigations “extremely unilateral, arbitrary and discriminatory,” accusing Washington of “attempting to construct trade barriers.”

Chinese and US trade officials met in Paris on Sunday for talks that Washington has said would last two days.

Trump wrote in his post that the Supreme Court “knew where I stood, how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country, and instead decided to, potentially, give away Trillions of Dollars to Countries and Companies who have been taking advantage of the United States for decades.”

In another post Sunday night, Trump excoriated federal judge James Boasberg for quashing subpoenas issued as part of a probe into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over costs linked to the bank’s headquarters renovations.

“What Boasberg has done on the ‘Too Late’ Powell case, and many others, has little to do with the Law, and everything to do with Politics,” Trump said.

He has repeatedly insulted Powell over the central bank’s policies on setting the economy’s key interest rate.

Trump has been vocal about his preferences for lower interest rates, criticizing Powell and attempting to unseat Fed governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud.

In January, the US Supreme Court appeared skeptical of Trump’s attempts to fire Cook, with a majority of judges expressing doubts that the administration had shown sufficient cause to remove her.

“This completely inept and embarrassing Court was not what the Supreme Court of the United States was set up by our wonderful Founders to be,” Trump said in his social media post. “They are hurting our Country, and will continue to do so.”

“All I can do, as President, is call them out for their bad behavior! This statement about the United States Supreme Court will cause me nothing but problems in the future, but I feel it is my obligation to speak the TRUTH.” — AFP

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