News

An explosion tore through Russia’s bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea early on Saturday, killing at least three people and severely damaging its structure in a major blow to Vladimir Putin more than seven months into his invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s anti-terrorist committee said a truck exploded on the bridge’s roadside in the early

Liz Truss has overruled her chancellor and insisted the UK should not set a limit on the number of applications for low-tax investment zones despite internal Treasury concerns the projects could cost billions of pounds in lost taxes. The flagship policy designed to turbocharge UK investment is a key plank of Truss’s “dash for growth”

The White House said nothing was off the table a day after Opec+ angered Washington with sharp cuts to world oil supply, as it considered responses — including new releases from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to contain energy prices. The Opec+ cartel led by Saudi Arabia and Russia on Wednesday agreed to lower production

The White House has accused Opec+ of aligning with Russia after Saudi Arabia led the group in agreeing deep oil production cuts, prompting a backlash from countries already battling surging energy inflation triggered by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The Opec+ group said it would reduce production targets by 2mn barrels a day, equivalent to 2

Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for the initially agreed price of $44bn, in a move that could put an end to one of the most high-profile corporate legal battles in decades. The Tesla chief sent a letter to Twitter on Monday night offering to go ahead with the deal, less than two weeks

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is to accelerate the publication of his plan to cut Britain’s debt in an attempt to reassure markets after he was forced to make a humbling U-turn on a key part of his “mini-Budget”. Kwarteng is expected to publish his medium-term fiscal plan, accompanied by official forecasts, later this month after previously

Two former health secretaries, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt, on Sunday announced bids to stand as Conservative party leader with pledges to slash taxes in an effort to win support from MPs. A total of nine candidates have now announced they will stand to replace Boris Johnson as UK prime minister, with more expected to

Rishi Sunak, who quit as Boris Johnson’s chancellor this week, launched his bid to lead the Conservative party on Friday with a pledge that he will avoid “comforting fairy tales”. His video to launch his campaign appeared a coded attack on what many MPs have seen as the prime minister’s Panglossian approach to policy. “Someone

Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has been shot in the city of Nara, public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday. Abe was seen collapsing during a speech in Nara at around 11.30am, the broadcaster reported. He was bleeding. An NHK reporter on the scene heard the sound of a gunshot. The former prime minister has

Boris Johnson has announced his “painful” resignation but defied pressure to step down immediately as prime minister, insisting he would remain in office until a new Conservative party leader is chosen. In an address in front of No 10 Downing Street, after days of turmoil and mass resignations from his government, he accused his party

Nadhim Zahawi, the UK’s new chancellor of the exchequer, has said he will review government plans to raise corporation tax from 19p to 25p as Boris Johnson seeks to rescue his floundering administration. Zahawi was appointed on Tuesday night after the shock resignation of his predecessor Rishi Sunak, health secretary Sajid Javid and 10 junior

Boris Johnson on Tuesday faced explosive allegations that Number 10 did not tell the truth over what the UK prime minister knew about inappropriate behaviour by the disgraced former Tory deputy chief whip Chris Pincher. Lord Simon McDonald, former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote on Tuesday that Pincher was subject to a formal

The executive responsible for easyJet’s operations has left the airline following thousands of flight cancellations and disruption. The low-cost carrier said on Monday that Peter Bellew had resigned as chief operating officer, but would stay with the company temporarily to “ensure a smooth transition”. EasyJet has been forced to cancel thousands of flights this summer

Senior Brussels officials are discussing the creation of an EU-wide sanctions authority, as they push for tougher and more consistent enforcement of penalties related to the war in Ukraine. Mairead McGuinness, financial services commissioner, said officials were open to introducing an EU version of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac), the powerful US Treasury

Hackers with suspected links to China’s intelligence agencies were still advertising for new recruits to work on cyber espionage, even after the FBI indicted the perpetrators in an effort to disrupt their activities. Hainan Tengyuan, a Chinese technology company, was actively recruiting English language translators in March according to job adverts seen by the Financial

Tensions are growing between Downing Street and UK regulators over Boris Johnson’s flagship post-Brexit reform of the insurance sector, which aims to unleash an “investment big bang” in British infrastructure. The prime minister has told allies he is “getting impatient” over the pace of change to the so-called Solvency II rules and with what he

The UK’s trade performance fell to its worst level since records began in the first quarter of 2022, heaping more pressure on sterling in international currency markets. Although the Office for National Statistics warned that the figures it published were “subject to higher levels of uncertainty than normal”, the new system it used to collect

The US will increase its military deployments in Europe as part of a scaling up of Nato defences, President Joe Biden said, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden said the Nato leaders summit in Madrid was “history-making” and that the additional US deployments would “send an unmistakable message that Nato is strong and

Christine Lagarde said the European Central Bank would act in “a determined and sustained manner” to tackle record inflation in the eurozone, especially if there were signs of price expectations rising sharply among consumers and businesses. “Inflation in the euro area is undesirably high and it is projected to stay that way for some time

Nato is to agree an overhaul of its battle plans to offer better protection to the alliance’s eastern flank, tearing up a model that could have meant relinquishing and then attempting to recapture the Baltic states in the event of a Russian invasion. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato secretary-general, told the Financial Times that the new military