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UK chancellor Rishi Sunak said his latest package of support for UK households will have a “minimal impact” on inflation after the government announced a windfall tax on energy companies to fund lower fuel bills. “Our estimate and my view is that it will have a minimal impact on inflation,” Sunak told Sky News on

Boeing’s Starliner space capsule returned to Earth on Wednesday after docking successfully at the International Space Station in a much-needed victory for the aerospace group as it contends with an array of production delays. Starliner was launched last Thursday atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and docked at the

Boris Johnson must “bear responsibility” for the culture in Downing Street during the pandemic that allowed repeated breaking of Covid rules, senior civil servant Sue Gray concluded in her long-awaited verdict on the partygate scandal. Gray’s 37-page report — plus photographs — is an indictment of lawbreaking and drinking in 10 Downing Street in the

Auditors and tax advisers in the UK are lobbying the government for exemptions from a ban on working for businesses in Russia imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. Foreign secretary Liz Truss this month announced plans to force British accounting, management consulting and public relations firms to cut ties with Russian clients as part of

US president Joe Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan militarily if China were to invade in remarks made during his first visit to Japan. “Yes. That is the commitment we made,” Biden said at a joint news conference in Tokyo when asked whether he was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan. Speaking alongside

The EU’s decision to suspend its deficit and debt rules for an extra year is not an excuse for member states to persist with loose spending policies, Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner has said, in a call for more fiscal discipline. “The fact that member states are now able to deviate from the Stability and

China is intensifying its drive for influence in the Pacific by negotiating security deals with two additional island nations following a pact with the Solomon Islands, according to officials in the US and allied countries. Beijing’s talks with Kiribati, a Pacific island nation 3,000km from Hawaii where US Indo-Pacific Command is based, are the most

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

Shares in Chinese technology companies led declines across the Asia-Pacific region in the wake of Wall Street’s worst day since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic as concerns mounted over global growth. Hong Kong-listed shares in Tencent fell as much as 8.6 per cent on Thursday after the Chinese internet group reported its slowest

UK inflation hit 9 per cent in April, its highest level in over 40 years, after soaring gas and electricity bills intensified the cost of living crisis facing households. The rate of consumer price inflation was close to economists’ expectations and is almost double the rate the Bank of England expected only six months ago.

UK unemployment fell to its lowest level in nearly half a century in the first quarter of 2022, with almost a million people switching jobs as the number of vacancies rose to a new high of 1.3mn. The Office for National Statistics said the jobless rate stood at 3.7 per cent in the three months

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

Saudi Aramco has reported $39.5bn in earnings in the first quarter of 2022, up 82 per cent year on year due to the surge in global energy prices as a consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Aramco — which last week overtook Apple as the world’s most valuable company — declared that it would pay

Global stocks rose on Friday but were on track for their longest streak of weekly losses since the 2008 financial crisis, as fears over inflation and an economic slowdown continued to stalk markets. The FTSE All World index, which is on track for a 3.9 per cent fall this week in its sixth straight week

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has attacked “corporate greed” and excessive pay for “mediocre performance” and vowed to take action against the worst offenders. Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norway’s $1.2tn oil fund, told the Financial Times that it would in particular target large salary packages that were not justified by performance, or were

The UK economy unexpectedly contracted in March for the first time this year, driven in particular by services and manufacturing, as households brace themselves for a tighter cost of living squeeze. Gross domestic product declined 0.1 per cent between February and March, data published by the Office for National Statistics showed on Thursday, below the

Elon Musk has said he would reverse Donald Trump’s ban from Twitter, accusing the social media company of leftwing bias that had aggravated political divisions in the US. “I think it was a morally bad decision, and foolish in the extreme,” Musk said of the lifetime ban of Trump, which was imposed soon after a

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

EU capitals should consider seizing frozen Russian foreign exchange reserves to help pay for the cost of rebuilding Ukraine after the war, the bloc’s top diplomat has said, as the west debates how to force Moscow to pay for some of the damage the conflict has caused. Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign

A jubilant Sinn Féin was poised to clinch a historic victory in Northern Ireland’s elections and become the region’s biggest political force for the first time in a century, after more than half the seats to the Stormont assembly were decided. Sinn Féin, the party long associated with the paramilitary IRA, was clearly ahead of