News

The US House of Representatives passed the $1.75tn Build Back Better bill on Friday morning, sending Joe Biden’s ambitious social spending package to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate. The final vote was 220-213, with all but one Democrat voting in favour and every Republican opposing it. The Democrat-controlled House had aimed to

Turkey slashed interest rates on Thursday, sending the lira tumbling to a new record low and amplifying concerns President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fixation on low borrowing costs will worsen already acute inflation. The central bank cut its one-week repo rate by 1 percentage point to 15 per cent, marking the third straight reduction in interest

US President Joe Biden has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the country’s biggest oil companies are engaged in “potentially illegal conduct” that is resulting in higher gasoline prices for Americans. In a letter to FTC chair Lina Khan, Biden said there was “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behaviour” in the market, noting

Germany’s energy regulator said it had “temporarily suspended” certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, dealing a setback to the Kremlin-backed gas project and sparking a rise in UK and continental European gas prices. The regulator said it could not yet approve the project, led by Russia’s Gazprom, because its owners had not yet properly

The Dutch government has launched an eleventh-hour attempt to keep Shell in the Netherlands by seeking to abolish a controversial dividend tax cited by the energy group as a reason to unify its share structure and move its headquarters to the UK. Officials from the Dutch government told the Financial Times that the caretaker government

The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow succeeded in getting 197 countries to agree new rules on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, but last-minute objections from India and China stymied a commitment to end coal use and fossil fuel subsidies. Conference president Alok Sharma fought back tears in the final minutes as he apologised to other ministers

In early March 2020, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer was summoned to the White House to discuss the disease that was sweeping across the world. Mikael Dolsten did not talk about the vaccine that would later bring the company fame and enormous wealth: instead, in those early days, he described how the drugmaker was working on

Jes Staley exchanged 1,200 emails with Jeffrey Epstein over a four-year period with content that included unexplained terms such as “snow white”, according to people familiar with the correspondence between the former Barclays chief executive and the convicted sex offender. Staley resigned from Barclays last week after seeing preliminary conclusions of an investigation by UK

Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to cut the transit of gas and goods through Belarus to Europe if the EU imposes further sanctions on his regime over the migrant crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border. The Belarus president was responding to an announcement by Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, on Wednesday that the bloc would

US consumer prices are expected to have surged in October at their fastest pace in three decades, as bottlenecks and other supply-chain disruptions intensify and inflationary pressures broaden. Consensus forecasts compiled by Bloomberg indicate that the consumer price index to be published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday rose 5.9 per cent in

US industrial group General Electric is to split itself into three public companies from 2023, a big step in chief executive Larry Culp’s plan to streamline the sprawling conglomerate. The companies will focus on healthcare, energy and aviation. GE Healthcare will be spun off in 2023, with GE retaining a 19.9 per cent stake in

Tesla shares were under pressure on Monday after millions of Twitter users polled by chief executive Elon Musk concluded that he should sell 10 per cent of his stake in the electric carmaker. The 24-hour poll, which was conducted over the weekend, is the latest stunt by Musk to delight fans but risk controversy. When

China reported dozens of new local coronavirus infections on Saturday, a day after the government reaffirmed its commitment to strict measures designed to limit the pandemic’s spread within its borders. The country’s National Health Commission on Sunday reported 74 new cases for the previous day, of which 50 were locally transmitted. A wave of cases

Nancy Pelosi stared down progressives in her own party on Friday, vowing to press ahead with a vote on a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill while delaying consideration of a separate, larger social spending package popular with the leftwing of the Democratic party. The move breaks a longstanding promise to move the two bills through Congress

US jobs growth picked up after two straight months of disappointing gains as Covid-related concerns that have kept workers on the sidelines eased. Employers in the world’s largest economy added 531,000 jobs in October, above the upwardly-revised 312,000 positions created the previous month and closer to the roughly 560,000 monthly average seen since the start

One of Austria’s most senior military officials has been removed from a sensitive government position amid concerns over his links to Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of fraudulent payment company Wirecard. Brigadier Gustav Gustenau was until recently head of the office of security policy within the Austrian ministry of defence — which provides

The Mark Carney-led coalition of international financial companies signed up to tackle climate change has up to $130tn of private capital committed to hitting net zero emissions targets by 2050. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (Gfanz) — which is made up of more than 450 banks, insurers and asset managers across 45 countries

Pfizer has more than doubled the 2021 sales forecast for its Covid-19 vaccine since February and predicted another bumper year in 2022 as it expands global distribution and begins shipping jabs for boosters and children. The US company said on Tuesday that it expected to generate $36bn in sales this year and $29bn in 2022,

Jes Staley is to step down as Barclays chief executive following a regulatory investigation into the way he described his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. In a statement on Monday, Barclays said that it was made aware of the results of the investigation from the FCA and PRA on Friday and that: “In view of those

G20 leaders have sealed a deal to end international financing of coal power in a boost ahead of the opening of the COP26 climate summit. Leaders at a G20 summit in Rome agreed to end financing for coal-fired power plants overseas by the end of this year, according to the final text of their communiqué.