In normal circumstances, the Conservative party should easily win Thursday’s by-election in Mid Bedfordshire, a well-heeled rural seat that delivered it a majority of almost 25,000 at the last general election. Instead the Tories, trailing badly in national opinion polls, are locked in an occasionally acrimonious three-way by-election fight; Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s party is
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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Goldman Sachs has reported a 36 per cent drop in third-quarter profits, the bank’s eighth straight quarter of falling earnings, as it grappled with losses following its pullback from retail banking and writedowns on its
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Jordan has warned that the Middle East is at the edge of an “abyss”, as diplomatic activity intensifies to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiralling into a regional conflict. King Abdullah of Jordan delivered his
Kasia Czarska drove 45 minutes on Sunday to vote in the town of Sulejówek on the eastern outskirts of Warsaw. The 39-year-old public relations manager planned her trip three weeks in advance of the fiercely contested election, studying Poland’s electoral map to work out in which constituency her vote could be of most help in
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US foreign policy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. At the time of writing, the US has no ambassador in Egypt. A chargé d’affaires is doing the job while the nominee for the permanent role enters her seventh month in the Surrealist theatre
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Russian politics myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Vladimir Putin has arrived in China for a high-level meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the Russian president’s first visit to Beijing since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine last year. The two-day trip comes
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Poland’s opposition leader Donald Tusk and his Civic Platform party alongside two smaller partners have won a combined 248 of the 460 seats in the next parliament, according to the country’s final election results, giving
A former Hamas leader said the group was holding 200 to 250 people captive, but was focused on securing the release of thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons. Khaled Meshaal, who now heads Hamas’s diaspora office and still holds an important position in its leadership, said during an interview with Qatar-based Al Araby
US arms manufacturers are preparing to surge weapons supplies to Israel at a time when they are already under pressure to arm Ukraine and replenish depleted Pentagon stocks, a challenge analysts say will add stress to a stretched defence industrial base. Unlike Ukraine, which has been the recipient of hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles,
Asked why he moved to Kfar Aza — a kibbutz so poor in the 1960s that when the food wagon arrived each evening, he had to choose between half a boiled egg or a slice of cheese — 67-year-old Shai Hermesh answered proudly with a single word. “Zionism,” he said. For the next six decades,
As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians abandon their homes in northern Gaza and flee to the coastal strip’s south, alarm is mounting in Egypt that the deepening humanitarian crisis will be thrust across its borders. Egypt, the only country other than Israel to share a frontier with besieged Gaza, is already being urged by the
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The writer is director for research and training at Bellingcat and an assistant professor with the Global Justice Investigations Lab at Utrecht University It has been difficult to avoid the horrific footage in the news
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon has decided to stop DJing at high-profile events following criticism that his hobby created a distraction from his work leading the Wall Street firm, according to people with knowledge
Stock markets rallied on Monday, retracing sharp moves at the end of last week as investors looked ahead to a flurry of economic data and US corporate earnings. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 jumped 1.1 per cent — rebounding from Friday’s 0.5 per cent decline — led by financials including Charles Schwab, which rose 4.7
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The terror threat alert in Brussels was raised to its highest level on Monday after two Swedes were killed in a shooting that Belgian authorities said had a potential terrorist motivation. A police spokesperson confirmed
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Former US president Donald Trump has told a London court he would be willing to come to the UK to testify in his data protection lawsuit over the notorious dossier that alleged links between him
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. A judge in Washington has imposed a partial gag order on Donald Trump in the federal case accusing him of seeking to overturn the 2020 US presidential election. Federal judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday granted
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange had committed to more than $1bn in sponsorship and endorsement deals months before its collapse late last year, according to testimony from one of his lieutenants, Nishad Singh. Singh was
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. People in the Gaza strip now have only “severely limited access” to drinking water, the UN has warned, as Israeli bombardments prompted a quarter of a million people to crowd into shelters over the past
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has stopped accepting new customers in the UK after regulators cracked down on digital assets companies advertising to British consumers. The company announced the policy less than an hour
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The UN is pressing Israel to urgently agree to safe corridors for the movement of Palestinians in Gaza and the delivery of aid to the blockaded strip as it estimates that 1mn people have fled