Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

> At this point, the Houthis control Yemen. BBC and the gang are just promoting Western propaganda by pretending otherwise.

News media generally report the de iure situation, not the de facto situation. And de iure, Yemen still has a regular government, and the Houthi are a bunch of rebels.

> Will this bring oil prices down in Europe ... This will not help Asia

This hurts Europe more than Asia.

The UK, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, and others are similarly opposed to the Houthis having conducted airstrikes on the Houthis (eg. 2025) as well as helping target them directly or indirectly.

And a large portion of global shipping is owned by Greek conglomerates - a country that is a close ally of Israel.

Most GCC states also have some form of defense agreement with the UK or France. If those turn out to be meaningless, it reduces their incentive to cut preferential deals with European states.

Additionally, this further enhances Turkiye and Pakistan's hand, as Saudi Arabia has signed defense pacts with both and Pakistan has threatened action against Iran yesterday if further incidents threaten Saudi Arabia. If they were able to dislodge the Houthis without direct European intervention, then it is a massive black stain on the EU's power projection capacity and it's claim that it should be treated as a great power. It also gives Turkiye additional leverage against the EU.

Finally, the Houthis struck the East-West Pipeline [0]. Much of the KSA's oil is in Eastern Saudi Arabia around Dhahran. Most large Asian states like China, India, Japan, and South Korea have continued operations in Iran that allowed them continued passage. European states lack access to GCC oil as a result of Perim island being controlled by the Houthis.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/yemens-houthis-rea...

Presumably to indicate that the parts in quotes are indeed quoted literally from the source that is mentioned in the same sentence?

When I moved from the US to the UK, the use of quotation marks in news headlines was something that confused me. In the US, these would be "scare quote", with the quotation marks basically standing in for the words "so-called". In the UK, that is NOT their meaning. The quotation marks mean "we are not ourselves in a position to verify this, but it is the words that a source has told us". Very different meaning -- and once I got used to it, I think the UK use of language in this case is more honest and useful.

tl;dr: two countries, divided by a common language.

I would agree if they were actually quoting someone or if it was a more substantial quote. In this case, it appears to be an anonymous source.