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It’s remarkable how easily we can slip into the assumption that what currently is, has always been so. Extended 30ºC heat in Britain. The most well-educated people voting for leftwing parties. Japan and Italy facing demographic crises due to old and ageing populations. So it may come as a surprise that in 1985, Britain was

British taxpayers have become shareholders in a gym studio for the face, a kombucha producer and a cannabis oil company as part of a scheme set up during the coronavirus pandemic to help small businesses. One of a number of government-backed initiatives, the Future Fund scheme was launched by former chancellor Rishi Sunak in May

The numbers at first seemed like a typo. Calpers, the massive California state pension fund, said its public equity and fixed-income investments had each recorded losses of nearly 15 per cent for the 12 months ending in June. Yet its private asset portfolio in private equity and real estate recorded gains north of 20 per

Liz Truss’s supporters have stepped up their attack on the Bank of England’s handling of inflation, as the foreign secretary blamed the BoE and the Treasury for failing to avert the economic crisis facing Britain. Truss says she will change the mandate of the BoE to toughen its focus on inflation, while she claims that

The number of people applying for unemployment aid in the US reached the highest level in more than six months last week, amid growing signs the historically tight labour market could be cooling. In the week to July 30, there were 260,000 initial jobless claims on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to labour department data

The writer is a senior fellow at Yale University and author of the upcoming book, ‘Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives’ Geostrategic accidents rarely happen out of thin air: look no further than the first world war. Nancy Pelosi’s unfortunate stopover in Taiwan, which follows years of mounting Sino-US tensions, should

UK construction activity fell for the first time since the start of last year as high inflation and rising interest rates took their toll on the sector, according to a closely watched survey. The headline seasonally adjusted S&P Global/Cips UK construction purchasing managers’ index, or PMI, fell to 48.9 for July, down from 52.6 the

European equities rose cautiously on Thursday as investors balanced positive US corporate earnings with a wave of monetary tightening by central banks. The regional Stoxx 600 share index added 0.3 per cent in morning trading, lifted by technology stocks after Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite equity gauge rose to its highest level in three months

When I covered retail for the FT in the early 1990s, industry bosses would often recite their three secrets of success: location, location, location. Back then, retail was largely a property game. Companies would make huge efforts to analyse local demographics, economics and infrastructure to estimate potential footfall and spend small fortunes to acquire the

Britain faces a protracted recession and the worst squeeze on living standards in more than 60 years, the Bank of England warned on Thursday, as it raised interest rates to their highest level since the onset of the global financial crisis. Eight of the Monetary Policy Committee’s nine members voted to raise interest rates by

Looking back over some old reviews recently, I found one where I absolutely leathered a place because, despite the fantastic food, I objected strongly to their completely “natural” wine list. What’s embarrassingly clear, reading it four years later, is how the experience made me feel impotent, disempowered and slighted. If I’d previously been in denial

Growth in the UK is projected to be lower than its peers in the coming years, and inflation is expected to be higher and more persistent. But I think it is worth looking at an underpriced risk: that a muddled government response might accidentally set the already-ruined British state ablaze because ministers lack a clear

Megan Mohr was five years into her Apple career when, in 2013, a male colleague took advantage of her after a platonic night out drinking together. After the colleague drove her home and helped her inside, she briefly fell asleep before waking to the sound of clicking. The colleague had removed her shirt and bra.

Is Beyoncé still a pop star? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself over the past week as I walked around Brooklyn, where her latest album has been blasting steadily from cars and portable speakers, providing a soundtrack to late summer barbecues and block parties. I even witnessed one man playing Renaissance loudly through his

Chinese rhetoric was running so hot ahead of Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan this week that many people watching livestreams of the historic moment on state-controlled websites were surprised when her plane touched down at Taipei’s Songshan Airport. Why, some wondered, had the People’s Liberation Army Air Force not forced the US House of Representatives

Dozens of men and boys, covered head to toe in coal dust, stream in and out of the mine shafts bored deep into a mountain in northern Afghanistan. In the mines below Nahrain in Baghlan province, children as young as eight work as labourers, loading the fossil fuel on to donkeys which carry it to

Last week something unusual happened. A chief executive who presided over a UK corporate failure received a financial punishment. The case in question was particularly egregious: the collapse of construction company Carillion in 2018 with £7bn in liabilities and £29mn in cash. The fines for directors? At less than £400,000 a piece, maybe not so

Tesla rival Lucid Motors halved its 2022 production target on Wednesday, citing “extraordinary supply chain” challenges as it tries to ramp up production and meet “strong demand”. The California-based group, backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said 2022 production is now estimated between 6,000 and 7,000 cars, down from an earlier projection of 12,000

Foreign secretary Liz Truss, frontrunner in the race to become the next British prime minister, said she would look to change the Bank of England’s mandate to ensure it controlled inflation. Speaking at a hustings of Conservative party members in Cardiff on Wednesday, she argued that inflation had been caused by “huge” supply side shocks

SoftBank has raised as much as $22bn in cash from deals that would sharply reduce its stake in Alibaba over the coming years, as the Japanese investor responds to a market downturn that has ravaged its technology portfolio. The group, led by billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, has this year carried out the sale of about