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Britain’s cost of living crisis is deepening by the day. Millions worry about how they will pay their winter heating bills. The UK government, meanwhile, is frozen in inaction as it waits for the result of a two-month, presidential-style campaign to elect the next Conservative party leader and prime minister. The two candidates have sparred

If I scatter broken glass on the ground and someone else walks over it and cuts their feet, does it matter “when” they cut their feet? That’s the thought experiment at the start of the philosopher William MacAskill’s forthcoming book, What We Owe The Future. MacAskill’s argument is that harm is harm, whether my littering

Stock markets were subdued on Monday as disappointing Chinese economic data and an interest-rate cut by the country’s central bank complicated the global outlook. US equity futures declined, with contracts tracking the S&P 500 falling 0.5 per cent. The broad Wall Street index on Friday closed out its fourth consecutive week of gains. Contracts tracking

Dinner parties in the Indian capital tend to start late and end late, sometimes stretching into the wee hours. In the posher households, the seemingly endless rounds of snacks are typically washed down with generous measures of premium booze. But Delhi, one of India’s megacities (population more than 18mn) is running short of places to

For a man who had been held up at gunpoint the previous evening, Mmusi Maimane was on surprisingly good form, when I met him in Cape Town this month. Maimane, one of South Africa’s leading opposition politicians, was in a suburban restaurant when armed men entered, forced all the diners to lie on the floor

Hong Kong’s accounting watchdog has launched an investigation into Evergrande Property Services, a major subsidiary of the embattled Chinese property developer, and its auditor PwC over a $2bn loan scheme that led to an executive clear-out last month. The investigation will put more scrutiny on Evergrande, the world’s most indebted real estate developer, after it

China has cut a crucial lending rate in an effort to shore up growth as the world’s second-biggest economy is buffeted by repeated lockdowns and a worsening property downturn. The People’s Bank of China on Monday reduced the medium-term lending rate, through which it provides one-year loans to the banking system, by 10 basis points

Liz Truss, the Tory leadership favourite, has ruled out splitting up the UK Treasury if she becomes prime minister next month, but she will turn Number 10 into an “economic nerve centre” calling the shots on economic policy. Truss believes that many of Boris Johnson’s problems as prime minister arose because he did not have

Richard Rogers’ buildings are known for their inside-out architecture. The Inmos microprocessor factory in Newport, south Wales, completed in 1982, is no exception. Like the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyd’s headquarters in the City of London, the factory’s services run on the building’s exterior through multicoloured pipework, freeing the chipmaking “clean rooms” of

The writer is chair of Rockefeller International Today, India marks its 75th birthday, no richer relative to the rest of the world than it was at independence, but very much on the upswing. India started out as the world’s sixth-largest economy, fell to 12th by 1990, and has since staged a comeback — to sixth place. Its

A decade or so on from the financial crisis, the singular sense of purpose that drove a frenzy of regulatory interventions has faded. Banks and insurers are so much safer now that regulators seem nonplussed about their resilience even as countries including the US and the UK flirt with recession, and the fallout from Russia’s

Europe’s office market faces the toughest conditions since the financial crisis, experts have warned, as rising interest rates and a surge in building costs threaten to choke off its recovery from the pandemic. Higher interest rates and a broader tightening in financial conditions have driven the cost for office owners of servicing their debt above

Mohammad Daud had not visited his relatives for around five years. The 32-year-old in the southeastern Afghan city of Jalalabad avoided the long trip to their rural district, fearing he might be harassed, kidnapped or killed by thieves or the Taliban along the way. In recent months, however, he has visited repeatedly, going to meet

Afghanistan has two anniversaries coming up. Friday is Independence Day, commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919, in which Britain granted Afghanistan self-determination over its foreign affairs. However, most will be more concerned with Monday, which marks a year since the Taliban regained control. This week also begins with the 75th anniversary

The Conservative leadership candidates came under growing pressure on Sunday to detail plans to tackle soaring energy bills, with increasing calls to find a way to freeze the amount households pay. Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour party, and some of the UK’s largest energy providers have put forward separate plans to cap

US lawmakers demanded more information on the potential threat to national security posed by Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents, as the fallout from the unprecedented search at the home of the former president reverberated through Washington. The comments by Democrats and Republicans on Sunday were among the first reactions from Congress to the release

Kingdom Holding, one of Saudi Arabia’s highest-profile investors, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Russian energy firms shortly before and after the invasion of Ukraine this year, the group disclosed in a filing on Sunday. Majority owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Kingdom made the investments even as western leaders sought to increase pressure

The EU has demanded that Serbia and Kosovo abandon talk of war as the bloc and Nato prepare to hold crisis talks with the rivals this week in a bid to avert fresh conflict in the Balkans. Tension between the neighbouring states, which often threatens the stability of the Balkans, spilled over into violent protests

There has been some suggestion that the US judicial system should rein back its investigations of Donald Trump, or drop them altogether. American social peace, they argue, is more precious than the blind pursuit of justice. If the price of stability is forbearance, so be it. Thankfully, Merrick Garland, the US attorney-general, took an oath

Donald Trump has mocked, dismissed and railed against the FBI and US Department of Justice for the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate this week. But the warrant that was presented to the former president’s attorneys to justify the swoop on his Florida home to retrieve boxes of classified documents he had retained since leaving the