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Italian oil major Eni plans to spend at least €2.5bn in the UK over the next four years as the government demands oil and gas companies significantly increase investment in Britain’s energy system or face a windfall tax on their soaring profits. The commitment by the group — the ninth-largest gas producer in the North

Anthony Albanese is on track to become Australia’s first Labor prime minister in nine years, after Scott Morrison’s conservative Liberal-National coalition government failed to win enough seats to form either a majority or minority government. But unexpected wins from the environmentalist Greens and a number of climate-focused independent candidates meant it was not immediately clear

Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, said on Friday that it was “crucial” to ensure that the UK avoids stoking an “inflationary psychology” and indicated he supported further interest rate rises. With inflation having reached a 40-year high in April, Pill said that prices rising at more than four times the central bank’s

Boris Johnson will not be issued with further fines over his involvement in the “partygate” scandal, Downing Street confirmed on Thursday, as the Metropolitan Police announced the end of its probe into the affair. The Met said it had made 126 referrals for fixed-penalty notices in its investigation into parties in Downing Street and Whitehall

Turkey has blocked Nato’s initial decision to process requests by Finland and Sweden to join the military alliance, throwing into doubt the hopes for a quick accession of the two Nordic countries. Nato ambassadors met on Wednesday with the aim of opening accession talks on the same day that Finland and Sweden submitted their applications

Twitter said it plans to enforce the $44bn takeover agreement with Elon Musk, just hours after the Tesla boss declared the purchase “cannot move forward” unless the social media company can certify the number of fake accounts. The San Francisco-based group made the comments in a detailed filing on Tuesday, outlining the whirlwind weeks in

China’s economic activity contracted sharply in April as a wave of lockdowns across the country posed the most significant challenge to its growth prospects since Covid-19 emerged over two years ago. Retail sales, the country’s main gauge of consumer activity which had already entered contraction in March, slumped 11.1 per cent year on year, compared

Hedge funds focused on US equities are pulling back sharply on their bets after the longest stretch of sustained selling in more than a decade left many managers nursing stiff losses. The S&P 500 index has fallen for six weeks in a row in a tumultuous stretch that on Thursday left Wall Street’s benchmark share

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the G7 group of industrialised nations was urgently seeking alternative routes for the export of Ukrainian grain as Russia’s war against its western neighbour raised the risk of a global “hunger crisis”. Speaking at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Germany, Baerbock said some

Elon Musk on Friday tweeted that he had put his $44bn deal to take Twitter private “temporarily on hold” pending details supporting the calculation that spam and fake accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of users. Musk posted his remarks on the microblogging site with a report from the Reuters news agency about the

Finland’s president and prime minister have vowed to join Nato, an announcement that will redraw Europe’s geopolitical map and push neighbouring Sweden to apply for membership in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin both said on Thursday that Finland “must apply” for Nato membership within days.

US consumer price growth remained at a four-decade high in April, despite the first moderation in the annual pace in eight months, underscoring the urgency of the Federal Reserve’s push to stamp out inflation. The consumer price index rose at an annual pace of 8.3 per cent last month, a step down from the 8.5

A global equity sell-off hit Asian markets on Tuesday after the steepest one-day fall on Wall Street since 2020 as investors worried about a slowdown in the world’s largest economies. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slid 2.8 per cent in afternoon trading after a one-day holiday. Chinese technology groups listed in the territory recorded some

Vladimir Putin has claimed Russia was forced to “strike back pre-emptively” against Ukraine, adding that the Kremlin’s troops were “fighting on their own land” in the conflict, just as Soviet forces did in the second world war. In his speech at the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square, the Russian president sought to

The director of the CIA said that Chinese president Xi Jinping has been “unsettled” by the war in Ukraine, which had demonstrated that the friendship between Beijing and Moscow had “limits” at a time when western allies were moving closer together. Speaking at the FT Weekend Festival in Washington on Saturday, Bill Burns said the

Early election returns showed Sinn Féin set for a historic victory in Northern Ireland’s elections in what would mark the first time the nationalist party, committed to Irish reunification, has outperformed unionists in the region. The party scooped 29 per cent of first-preference votes under Northern Ireland’s proportional representation system, up 1.1 points on the

Boris Johnson will face renewed pressure on his leadership on Friday after the Conservatives suffered significant defeats in local elections across the UK, including losing the flagship London council of Wandsworth. Labour won the borough beloved of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher for its ultra-low local tax rates after 44 years in Tory hands, but

The Bank of England has warned that the UK economy will slide into recession this year as higher energy prices push inflation above 10 per cent, a forecast that pushed sterling to a two-year low. Rising prices would cause the worst squeeze in household finances for many decades, the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee said as

Brussels will propose a phased-in ban on imports of all Russian oil as member states prepare to discuss a sixth package of penalties against Moscow for its invasion in Ukraine. The ban will cover all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined, European commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday. She vowed

BP recorded its highest quarterly earnings in more than a decade, benefiting from soaring prices for hydrocarbons and “exceptional” oil and gas trading revenues, even as it wrote down the value of its business in Russia to almost zero. The UK-listed oil major’s underlying profit on a replacement cost basis for the first three months