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The Federal Reserve’s drive to shrink its swollen balance sheet is poised to hit $1tn this month, a significant milestone in the US central bank’s attempt to reverse years of easy pandemic-era monetary policy as investors warn further reductions threaten to shake financial markets. The US central bank bought trillions of dollars of government bonds

Asylum seekers were evacuated from the accommodation barge leased by the UK on Friday after traces of the bacteria that cause legionnaires’ disease were found in the controversial vessel’s water system. The Home Office announced it had removed 39 people from the Bibby Stockholm, just days after the first asylum seekers had gone on board.

On August 1, around lunchtime, a UK resident who felt under-briefed on the coup in Niger would have found the homepage of our national broadcaster’s website unilluminating. “Hiccupping giant panda caught on camera in China” had made the editorial cut, though. So had “Boris Johnson’s swimming pool plans threatened by newts”: one of three stories that

With a record number of couples getting married this year, there is certainly lots to celebrate this wedding season. However, the cost of doing so may be tying your finances in knots. Having been delayed by pandemic restrictions, couples have had longer to plan ever more elaborate ceremonies. You only have to glance at Instagram

Global oil demand has hit a record and may move higher in August, threatening to prolong a recent rally in crude prices, the International Energy Agency said on Friday. Demand reached an all-time high of 103mn barrels a day in June driven by better than expected economic growth in OECD countries, strong summer air travel

Although the town sits at 8,000ft, it is a scorching afternoon in Aspen. Christo Grozev, lead Russia investigator at Bellingcat — the open-source investigative group that has exposed numerous Russian plots and assassinations — apologises for being about 20 minutes late, having just completed a five-hour drive up into the Rockies from Denver. He says

UBS has said it no longer needs a SFr9bn ($10.3bn) backstop from the Swiss government that was designed to shield the bank from losses following its rescue of Credit Suisse, in a move that may ease public anger over the deal. As part of the takeover, the Swiss government agreed to protect UBS from up

Saudi Arabia is pushing the UK, Japan and Italy to allow it to become a full partner in the landmark next-generation fighter jet project that the three countries signed in December. The request, confirmed by five senior officials in London, Tokyo and Rome, has already created strains within the tri-national alliance. While the UK and

From September, Russian high school students in the 11th grade — aged roughly 17 — will use a new textbook for studying modern history. Because the book covers events up to the present day, they will learn that “Ukraine is an ultranationalist state. Today, any dissent in Ukraine is severely persecuted, opposition is banned, everything

European and Asian stocks fell on Friday as traders closed out a week marred by geopolitical tensions between China and the US, and softer economic data that dented valuations in Asia’s largest economy. The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.5 per cent, with consumer goods stocks leading declines, while France’s Cac 40 lost 0.6 per cent

The UK economy picked up pace in the second quarter as consumers proved more resilient than expected in the face of rising interest rates. Gross domestic product was 0.2 per cent higher in the period from April to June than in the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday. This followed

Lucy Kellaway FT contributing editor and co-founder of Now Teach In the photograph I am sitting on a low wall wearing shorts and looking sunburned. On my knee is my daughter, who must have been about one, which means the year was 1992. We are somewhere in Tuscany and we are on holiday. I’m not smiling

Freiburg, in south-west Germany, is about the same size as my home city of Oxford. It has a few beautiful old buildings — the Münster is breathtaking — but little to compare with Oxford’s dreaming spires, particularly after the centre of Freiburg was heavily bombed in 1944. So which is the more pleasant, walkable city?

It was almost nine years ago to the day when the question of where Britain would rank among the US states for economic heft first became “a thing”. In an article for the Spectator, Fraser Nelson calculated that on a gross domestic product per capita basis, and after adjusting for price differences, the UK would

Beijing is making one of its biggest top-down efforts in years to tackle the debts racked up by local governments in a sign of authorities’ mounting concern over the risk to financial stability as the economy falters. China’s state council, the country’s cabinet, is sending teams of officials to more than 10 of the country’s

When the state-backed Postal Savings Bank of China unveiled a Rmb50bn ($7bn) credit line to Country Garden in November, it appeared China’s biggest private homebuilder would survive a sector-wide liquidity crisis. Nine months later, it is dangerously short of cash. The company expects to have lost Rmb45bn-Rmb55bn in the first half of the year and

SMIC’s second-quarter revenue was $1.56bn, narrowly beating the estimates of analysts polled by Refinitiv © Bloomberg Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, China’s national chip champion, warned on Friday that any market recovery would be slower than expected due to a cloudy economic outlook and geopolitical tensions. Zhao Haijun, co-chief executive, said SMIC had anticipated a better

Amazon has tracked the attendance of US-based workers and targeted those failing to comply with its hybrid working policy, becoming the latest employer to take a more aggressive approach to forcing staff back to the office. The Seattle-based tech group this week singled out some staff members to tell them they were “not currently meeting

Warsaw is planning a big military build-up along its border with Belarus to counter what the government sees as an increasing security threat from Russia’s ally and host of Wagner paramilitary fighters. Poland’s defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Thursday that about 10,000 soldiers would eventually be stationed on the Belarus border or nearby. The

This week’s violent surge in European gas prices underscores how the region’s success in weaning itself off Russian energy has left it more vulnerable to the ebb and flow of volatile global energy markets. Europe managed to avert an energy crisis last year by rapidly increasing imports of liquefied natural gas. The seaborne fuel replaced

The co-founder of Russian tech giant Yandex has spoken out against the “barbaric” war in Ukraine, an unusual public criticism from one of the country’s leading businessmen. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is barbaric, and I am categorically against it,” Arkady Volozh said in a statement published on Thursday. “I am horrified about the fate of