Donald Trump says any ships that come near the U.S. blockade will be eliminated.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Leanna Byrne.
How Hungary's economy might look post-Orban and the legacy of Bollywood legend Asha Bouchlet.
The US blockade of the key shipping route, the Strait of Hormuz, has come into force.
And in the last few minutes, President Trump has warned that, in his words, if any Iranian ships come anywhere close to the blockade, they will be immediately eliminated.
It comes after talks broke down between the two warring nations.
It's estimated that around 800 vessels are stuck in the strait, many loaded with cargo.
Thomas Copeland has been following movements in the strait for BBC Verify.
At this stage, there are so many open questions.
What we can say for sure is that satellite imagery from Saturday shows that the USS Abraham Lincoln, that US warship, it's positioned at the eastern edge of the Gulf of Oman, so about 200 kilometres, 124 miles to the south of Iran.
And that's the closest to the Gulf that we have seen this nuclear-powered warship.
For the duration of this conflict.
Two other nearby warships are also visible and they're consistent in sort of size and shape with the US Navy missile-guided destroyers.
CENTCOM, so US Central Command has previously said the two destroyers, the USS Frankie Peterson and the USS Michael Murphy, are in the area as part of a mission, they say, to clear sea mines that have previously been laid by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
And they published.
The Guard Corps Navy published what it says are the permitted routes to be followed when passing through the straits in order to avoid these sea mines.
So the question that's going to be open for the US military at this stage is how many ships do they need to have in the region?
Do they want to be really close, close to the Iranian coastline while trying to enforce this blockade, or can they do it from further away using drones and satellite imagery?
That was Thomas Copeland from BBC Verify.
But what are the shipping companies being told?
Cormac McGarry is a maritime expert at control risks.
Right now you're getting zero guidance.
Ships captains at that kind of level have not received any guidance yet about what's really going on.
So, to summarize, what we've had in the last 48 hours is more importantly than anyone else in the United States is that central command, which is the military element responsible for the area of operations in the Middle East, has basically said that they're going to blockade Iran in some form or another.
And they've also sailed a couple of destroyers through the Strait of Hormuz and said that they're going to issue more details to the maritime community soon.
But we haven't seen those details yet.
So no guidance, but if you are a ship owner, what decisions are they making?
Is it a hold position?
Is it a reroute?
What are the scenarios here?
Right now, if you are a ship that's trapped inside the Gulf, the reason you're trapped there is because you've already made the decision that sailing out through the Strait of Hormuz is too dangerous.
It's too dangerous for the ship, for the cargo and most importantly, the crew.
And they haven't been given any information yet really to assuage that fear, right?
So, in terms of scenarios that ship owner will need reassurance that their vessel will be protected against the threat from Iran right, or that there's a peace agreement such that there is no threat anymore.
But neither of those things are forthcoming at the moment.
Now, if this disruption holds, with traffic essentially already collapsing before this.
So how quickly does that feed through into global supply chains?
Oh, we're talking months.
Best case scenario tomorrow, which is very unlikely, best case scenario being a total cessation of hostilities, a declaration that the Strait is completely safe.
It would still take weeks just for the vessels trapped in the Gulf to get out.
Then you would have to start getting vessels coming into the Gulf to resume, quote unquote, normal trade.
And then, on top of that, it will take a long time for not just the backlog but the disruption to the supply chains that have occurred.
So even a best case scenario tomorrow, we're still talking months of disruption.
That was Cormac McGarry, maritime expert at Control Risks.
Of course, energy costs continues to be a big story.
Jane Sydenham, investment director at Rathbones Investment Management, is with us.
Jane, how much have prices jumped today?
So Brent crude, which is the sort of European or UK oil price, and the American West Texas crude are up about 5 or so.
They were up more than that, sort of 7, 7.5% earlier on last year.
And of course, they were considerably higher last week.
There is a sense that there are some talks taking place.
Yes, they weren't successful at the weekend, but it doesn't feel as though they're over either.
So markets are still expecting some sort of resolution reasonably soon.
And they also know that Donald Trump can change his mind very quickly.
And so that's why they're not higher.
Yeah, it was interesting, wasn't it?
The broader market reaction really did seem to be quite subdued.
Yes, I mean, the FTSE 100, the UK stock market is down about 0.2%.
The European index is down 0.3%.
And in the United States, stock markets are actually up slightly.
So there's generally a belief that this isn't going to continue or deteriorate too much.
All right, Jane Sydenham, Director at Rathbone Investment Management.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Now Hungary is under new leadership, after its long-term Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, lost power in a landslide election victory to a pro-European Union party.
But for the winner, Peter Magyar and his Tisser party, one of the first priorities will be to tackle a struggling economy with sluggish growth and the cost of living.
We spoke to Zsuzsa Gardusch, Managing Director at the recruitment firm Jobs Garden in Budapest, and she told me about the industry's struggling to sustain growth.
We see a major downturn in the automotive sector, where there are more and more layoffs, especially in the RD part and the white color positions.
And the construction industry is also in deep crisis here in Hungary due to the combination of sharp drop in state investment and standstill in the residential projects.
Robin Marshall is editor-in-chief of the Budapest Business Journal.
I asked him what shape the economy is in right now.
Not great is the short, most succinct answer.
The latest GDP figures we have are for Q4 last year and that was growth of, if you can call it, growth of 08.
The third year running of near stagnation.
One piece of good news was inflation, which in the latest figures actually came in lower than expected.
But it's a very small piece of good news.
Hungary is a very open economy.
It depends on doing trade with the world.
Specifically, it depends on doing trade with Germany.
And so long as the German economy is not doing well, then the Hungarian economy will not do well.
What do we know about the first economic priorities for this new government?
Well, they've said that they want to be friends with the much more integrated with the EU.
In fact, I think the Magyar has already said that his first visit will be to Poland.
There's a thousand years of friendship there.
So that's not a big surprise.
But his second visit will be to Brussels. to start laying the pathway to improved relations.
They have to get as much as they can from the EU just to get some incoming funds.
That was Robin Marshall from the Budapest Business Journal.
Now let's have a listen to this.
Now.
She was the inspiration behind the 90s classic song Brimful of Asha and the owner of the huge Indian restaurant chain Asha's.
Today, thousands gather in Mumbai to celebrate the life of one of Bollywood's biggest playback singers, Asha Bhushle.
Her career began in 1943 and, while her songs featured in over a thousand bollywood films, playback singers like asha weren't awarded royalties under until 2012 under the copyright amendment act.
Asha, who died age 92, leaves behind an empire worth almost 27 million dollars, And from Bollywood to Hollywood.
More than 1000 actors, directors and filmmakers, including Emma Thompson and Ben Stiller, have signed an open letter opposing the proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery, saying the deal would further harm an already battered entertainment industry in the United States.
And that is it from World Business Express. us and the BBC World Service.
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I'm Leanna Byrne.
Thanks for listening.
