Category: News

The second of three one-day rail strikes across Britain will go ahead on Thursday, the union at the heart of the dispute said, after talks to resolve the dispute broke down. Mick Lynch, head of the RMT union, criticised transport secretary Grant Shapps for the impasse in the negotiations between the RMT, the train operators…

Large parts of Britain have ground to a halt after the biggest strike to hit the country’s railways in 30 years began in the early hours of Tuesday with disruption to passengers expected to last all week. Members of the RMT union officially launched the industrial action by not turning up for night shifts that…

Strikes will spread across the UK unless the government acts on its promise to create a high wage economy, the leader of the country’s main movement for organised labour has warned. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said that workers all over the country were supporting striking rail employees and would in…

President Emmanuel Macron was on course to lose his majority in France’s National Assembly on Sunday night, after a strong showing in legislative elections by a left-green opposition alliance and a late surge from the extreme right. Initial results and projections by polling agencies after voting stations closed showed that Macron’s centrist Ensemble (Together) alliance…

A top US Federal Reserve official expressed early support for another 0.75 percentage point interest rate rise at the central bank’s next meeting in July, in anticipation that inflation will not moderate sufficiently to slow the pace of monetary tightening. In a remarks delivered on Saturday, Christopher Waller, a Fed governor, affirmed the central bank’s…

Shares in Asia followed Wall Street lower after the UK and Switzerland raised interest rates, adding to concerns that tighter monetary policies from central banks could undercut a global economic recovery. Japan’s benchmark Topix index and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 both shed 2 per cent, while South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.7 per cent. China’s CSI 300…

Stock markets and eurozone bond prices dropped on Thursday after Switzerland delivered an unexpected interest rate rise, following a sharp boost to borrowing costs by the US Federal Reserve. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 share index, which rallied on Wednesday after the European Central Bank promised a new mechanism to support weaker eurozone nations from rising…

The Federal Reserve is set to embrace an increasingly aggressive approach to monetary policy tightening as it confronts the highest inflation in four decades. During its two-day policy meeting, officials on the Federal Open Market Committee have been actively debating the merits of implementing the first 0.75 percentage point increase since 1994. An adjustment of…

Crypto exchange Coinbase plans to cut almost a fifth of its workforce, in the latest sign of the chill descending on the digital assets market as token prices tumble. The US-listed group’s plans to reduce its staffing by 1,100 employees comes as a sharp downturn in the crypto market threatens to deal a heavy blow…

Brussels is to launch legal action against the UK as early as Monday, on the publication of draft legislation to rip up large parts of the 2020 Brexit deal, EU officials say, as the two sides edge closer to a possible trade war. The officials said the European Commission would respond immediately to a British…

Boris Johnson has been accused by Tory MPs of “damaging the UK and everything the Conservatives stand for” as he prepares to publish a bill to rip up his 2020 Brexit deal with the EU covering trade with Northern Ireland. The legislation, to be published on Monday, will bring Johnson into conflict with many of…

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin accused China of stepping up coercive behaviour towards Taiwan as he stressed that Washington would maintain its military capacity to resist any force that threatened the country. Speaking at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue defence forum in Singapore, Austin said China was engaging in provocative behaviour across the Indo-Pacific region that…

Octopus Energy has made a last-minute entry in a three-way race to buy collapsed electricity and gas supplier Bulb, according to two people close to the deal. Centrica, the owner of British Gas, and Masdar, an Abu Dhabi-based energy company, are also in talks with the UK government as it tries to secure bids ahead…

The European Central Bank has paved the way for a series of rate rises, starting with a quarter-percentage point move in July and raising the prospect of a bigger half-point shift in September. The ECB said in a statement on Thursday that its governing council “intends to raise the key ECB interest rates by 25 basis…

Economic growth in the UK will grind to a halt next year with only Russia, hobbled by western sanctions, performing worse among the G20 leading economies, the OECD forecast on Wednesday. The Paris-based organisation’s forecast highlighted the effects of high UK inflation still squeezing household and corporate incomes in 2023 alongside a further round of…

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said a stalemate in the war with Russia was “not an option for us” as he once more appealed for western military support to restore his country’s territorial integrity. “We are inferior in terms of equipment and therefore we are not capable of advancing,” he said. “We are going to suffer…

Boris Johnson is facing a vote of no confidence in his leadership on Monday evening in a dramatic escalation of tension between the prime minister and his own MPs. Conservative MPs will vote in a secret ballot from 6pm to 8pm on whether they want Johnson to carry on as prime minister. Downing Street said…

Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff on Sunday hit back at remarks by Emmanuel Macron in which the French president said it was important not to “humiliate” Russia over the war in Ukraine. In an interview with French regional newspapers on Saturday, Macron said maintaining dialogue with Vladimr Putin was crucial “so that the day when…

Ukraine has warned that the world faces a critical food shortage unless Russia lifts its Black Sea port blockade, as improvements to other transport options would only enable it to deliver a fraction of its total grain stockpile. Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, told the Financial Times that “all of our activity won’t cover even…

The US economy registered another month of solid jobs growth in May, despite employers grappling with a historically tight labour market. Employers in the world’s largest economy added 390,000 jobs during the month, less than the upwardly revised 436,000 positions created during the previous period but more than economists had expected. The jobless rate steadied…