And it's 6 30 a.m. here in London a very good morning I'm Caroline Hepburn Now in a moment we will bring you our interview with the Liberal Democrat MP Vera hobhouse as we await the strategic energy plan from the government here in the UK will it be more wind power a lot more nuclear or just North Sea oil that we use to try to make the energy transition We put those questions to Vera Also here in the UK of course got rampant COVID cases march the highest number of COVID cases since the start of the pandemic Let's go to the markets though first before we get to that interview So a bond route after lael brainard's comments on a faster rundown of the fed giants balance sheet in terms of U.S. benchmark yields this morning We trade it two 62 So by 7 basis points JGB future is also sharply down Asian stocks are down this morning MSCI Asia Pacific index dropping 1.3% the nikkei did you 5 down by close to one and a half percent CSI 300 down three tenths of 1% COVID cases are worse than over in Mainland China more than 20,000 cases and you saw kaishin services PMI figures absolutely plunge although crude has a little bit of relief We're about three tenths of 1% for breakthrough this morning $106 96 the EU excluded Russian oil from impending sanctions at least for now that is still off the table for Europe Bloomberg dollar spot index is stronger a tenth of 1% Those are the markets Let's get to Bloomberg's Leanne guerin's with today's top stories Good morning Good morning to Caroline and thank you The international community is stepping up efforts to isolate Moscow and give extra support to Ukraine sanctions are escalating following what the west claims has evidence of the torture and murder of civilians They include a proposed ban on Russian coal imports into Europe The U.S. G 7 and EU are expected to bring in more financial restrictions later and NATO's meeting to discuss supplying Ukraine with weapons something secretary general Jens Stoltenberg predicts could influence peace talks We know that there is a very close link between what they can achieve at the negotiating table and their strength on the.