Checkmate. ♟️

Checkmate. You’re more than likely familiar with the name Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian chess grandmaster, ranked world number one. A pair of his jeans just sold at auction for $36,100! He is donating the proceeds to charity.

In December, he was fined for wearing said jeans to a chess tournament in New York. With officials instructing him to change immediately, that he couldn’t just arrive the next day without them, it became about principle to him - he said “no thanks” and left the tournament.

Later asked if he would appeal the decision, the 34 year old said he was too old to care and would probably just go on holiday instead. That’s more than enough to make him our favourite chess player, and more than enough to turn a pair of jeans into premium chess memorabilia!

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Reckitt Benckiser Group (RKT), Ashtead Group (AHT), Informa Plc (INF), Greggs (GRG), Rentokil (RTO).

Notable US earnings this week: Costco (COST), Crowdstrike (CRWD), Target (TGT), Kroger (KR).

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PROJECT WATCH

🏠 JJ Rhatigan wins £84m housing build work in Ealing. Read more

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🏭 H2Terminals sign MoU with Cadent for hydrogen supply to London. Read more

ECONOMY & FINANCE

Silver lady’s golden year
Rolls-Royce shareholders are grinning ear to ear as the FTSE 100 aerospace giant sees its shares rocket 16% following a stellar set of 2024 results announced last week. After a bumpy few years, the company has not only delivered robust trading numbers but also resumed dividend payments for the first time since 2019. A real lift-off moment—quite literally.

Revenues climbed 14.7% to a hefty £18.9 billion, with underlying profits a staggering 55% higher at £2.5 billion. Operating margins? Up to 13.8% from 10.3%—not too shabby for a company that, not too long ago, had investors biting their nails. Looking ahead, Rolls expects profits between £2.7 billion and £2.9 billion in 2025.

Defence has also been a bright spot, with plans to expand its submarine facilities in Derby, taking advantage of the UK government’s fresh enthusiasm for defence spending. It seems Rolls-Royce has found its fight—whether in the skies or under the sea.

With a stock price soaring faster than one of its jet engines, and dividends finally back on the table, Rolls-Royce has given the City something to cheer about. After a turbulence-filled few years, this might just be smooth flying ahead.. There’s even a £1 billion share buyback set to kick off too.

UK economy may dodge Trump tariffs
Donald Trump has dangled the prospect of a tariff-free trade deal with the UK, following Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s charm offensive at the White House. The former reality TV star and current US President described Starmer as a “very, very special person” with a “very tough” negotiating style—high praise indeed from the self-proclaimed dealmaker-in-chief.

While Trump loves a good tariff, he hinted that Britain might just be spared. The UK is on the economic ‘good’ list in the White House, as one of the few countries that American numbers have as running at a trade surplus for the United States (they sell more to us, than we do to them).

POLITICS

School dinners
In a rare moment of parliamentary unity, MPs are pushing to serve up automatic free school meals to 1.2 million eligible children—no paperwork, no stigma, just a hot meal on the table. The plan, baked into the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, would boost coverage to 21.6% of English pupils by using existing DWP data to cut out the bureaucratic faff that currently leaves 31% of low-income families missing out.

It’s a cross-party feast, with 14 Tory MPs backing the move, but the financial recipe is still up for debate. The Department for Education estimates the cost at £75 million per year, while the Institute for Fiscal Studies serves up a much chunkier £210 million figure. If the Lords don’t send it back to the kitchen, this could be plated up by September 2026.

Please call at 8am for an appointment
The government has cut a fresh deal with England’s GPs to put an end to the dreaded ‘8am scramble’—that daily ritual where patients frantically redial in hopes of securing a golden ticket (otherwise known as a doctor’s appointment). Pro tip: call 111 when needs must. The new contract promises more online booking, better continuity of care, and an extra £889m to help surgeries cope.

Ministers hope this will revive the idea of the ‘family doctor’, freeing up GPs from bureaucratic box-ticking so they can actually see patients. But while it’s a step in the right direction, doctors warn that rising costs could eat up much of the extra funding.

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ACROSS THE POND

Egg, white, and flu
The US is shelling out up to $1 billion to combat the relentless bird flu outbreak that's been ruffling feathers since 2022. Over 166 million chickens have succumbed, leaving egg prices soaring and Americans clutching their wallets - the USDA have forecasted they expect egg prices to rise more than 41% this year!

To combat this chirpy crisis, the USD is ensuring up to $500 million goes towards free biosecurity check-ups for farms, and $400 million to aid farmers forced to cull infected birds. You can only imagine the birds are hoping for NHS style waiting times for their ‘treatment’.

As an eggs-tra measure (sorry), imports from Turkey (the country, not the bird) are set to jump, with 420 million eggs queuing up to cross the pond to plug the gap left by the feathered flu victims. That’s more eggs than your nan's Easter egg creation any day.

Last legs for Greenpeace?
Greenpeace is facing a potentially crushing lawsuit, which might just be the environmental group’s Waterloo. A Texas-based oil company, Energy Transfer, is wielding a lawsuit claiming that Greenpeace protests cost them $300 million – a figure so staggering, it could mean bankruptcy for the green team.

The trial, going on in Morton County, North Dakota, accuses Greenpeace of delaying the Dakota Access Pipeline’s construction. Allegedly, Greenpeace orchestrated an “unlawful and violent scheme to cause financial harm to Energy Transfer, physical harm to its employees and infrastructure, and to disrupt and prevent Energy Transfer's construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline”.

Or in other words - organised a big protest, where 10,000 people turned up (including current health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr), and delayed their project. Greenpeace argue they didn’t lead anything, only shared information about the project which is protected by their right to free speech.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Greenpeace are suing ET right back. They claim Energy Transfer’s lawsuit is nothing short of judicial bullying – a SLAPP suit, they call it – which stands for "strategic lawsuit against public participation", but might as well stand for "silencing lots of pesky protests".

TECH

Mmmm… taste-e. If sharing food pics wasn’t annoying enough, scientists have now developed ‘e-Taste’—a device that lets you send flavours over the internet. Using an “electronic tongue” to analyse a dish’s chemical profile, the system recreates tastes by pumping five edible compounds onto the user’s tongue.

This could revolutionise immersive experiences, weight management, and online shopping—imagine being able to ‘taste’ a restaurant’s menu before ordering. But don’t bin your spice rack just yet: the system can’t replicate fattiness or spiciness, so digital vindaloos remain out of reach. Now, if only someone could invent a device that makes Mondays taste like Saturdays.

Apple updates: alongside rolling out new child protection features to make iPhones safer for kids, the tech giant has also found itself in hot water over a rather unfortunate voice-to-text glitch—where saying “racist” autocorrected to “Trump”. A bug, Apple insists, though it hasn’t stopped the internet from having a field day.

Still, while Apple is scrambling to fix that mess, it has stood its ground on something far more important. The UK government has been pushing for encryption backdoors, demanding access to users’ private data—but Apple refused to play ball. Instead, it pulled some of its most secure storage features from UK devices. A rare tech company move where privacy actually won, sort of.

WORLD

A volcanic verdict
In New Zealand, a High Court ruling has overturned the conviction of the owners of Whakaari/White Island, the site of a tragic 2019 volcanic eruption. While the company, Whakaari Management Limited, had been fined over $5m for failing to keep visitors safe, the court found that they weren’t actually responsible for day-to-day safety on the island—passing the buck to tour operators and emergency services. It’s a decision that’s as controversial as it is complex, raising questions about the responsibilities of landowners who grant access to risky locations.

PKK & Turkiye
After four decades of conflict, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) has declared a ceasefire with Turkiye. This comes after their imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, called for disarmament—a move that could finally bring an end to one of the region’s longest-running insurgencies. But before we raise a teacup to peace, let’s not forget: we’ve been here before.

The last ceasefire in 2015 collapsed faster than a soggy biscuit in hot tea, and President Erdogan isn’t exactly pouring out warm welcomes. While he acknowledged this as a "historic opportunity," he also warned that military operations would continue unless the PKK follows through. The group is pushing for Ocalan’s release to lead the peace process, but whether Turkiye will steep to that demand remains uncertain.

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