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The lost tribe of disillusioned Twitter users, fleeing the barely-moderated brawl they say the app’s new owner Elon Musk has fostered in their favoured public square, are roaming the fractured social media landscape in search of refuge. An obvious haven is Threads, a newly launched sister app to Instagram, owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. But

The Wagner paramilitary group has relocated to Belarus “for some time” before leaving to fight in Africa, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has said, adding that the group may later rejoin Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a dimly lit video filmed in a field and posted on Wednesday by a Wagner-linked channel, the warlord welcomed a

UK rental prices rose to the highest on record while house price growth declined as higher mortgage rates hit the property market, according to official statistics published on Wednesday. Private rental payments paid by tenants increased by 5.1 per cent in the 12 months to June, the largest annual percentage change since the data series

Goldman Sachs has slumped to its lowest quarterly profit in three years, as a costly retreat from consumer banking deepened the pain of the industry-wide slowdown in deals and trading. Net income plunged by almost two-thirds to $1.1bn in the second quarter, down from $2.8bn a year earlier, Goldman said on Wednesday. The Wall Street

Here is an economic forecast. There will be no credible low-tax option for British voters at the next election. Whatever leaders might say, there is no near-term strategy that reduces the rising tax burden. This is not the impression either of the two parties with a chance of forming the next government (for argument’s sake

Shares in UK property groups and housebuilders surged on Wednesday as investors dialled back their expectations for where interest rates might peak after inflation fell more than expected in June. Persimmon climbed 8.3 per cent, while Barratt Developments and Taylor Wimpey rose 7 per cent and 6.8 per cent respectively, helping London’s FTSE 100 close

It would be easy for western policymakers to conclude that Vladimir Putin’s attempt to weaponise energy supplies ended in failure. Europe avoided blackouts last winter, despite Russia slashing gas supplies that once met 40 per cent of demand. Prices have fallen more than 90 per cent from their peak last August, and European storage facilities

UK inflation eased more than expected to 7.9 per cent in June, providing some relief for the Bank of England ahead of its decision on interest rates next month. Annual inflation was down from 8.7 per cent in May, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. It was lower than the 8.2 per cent

Artificial intelligence companies are exploring a new avenue to obtain the massive amounts of data needed to develop powerful generative models: creating the information from scratch. Microsoft, OpenAI and Cohere are among the groups testing the use of so-called “synthetic data” — computer-generated information to train their AI systems known as large language models (LLMs)

It is easy to forget that early in Joe Biden’s presidency he made a bridge-building overture to Vladimir Putin. During the 2020 campaign, Biden barely mentioned Russia as a geopolitical rival to the US. China hogged all the attention. At the Geneva summit with his Russian counterpart in June 2021, the US president went to

What should an oil company like ExxonMobil do about the alarming spate of heatwaves, rainstorms and wildfires raging across the world? How should Shell or Saudi Aramco respond to the record-shattering rise in global temperatures we are seeing at what appears to be just the start of a serious warming El Niño event?  These questions

Corporate and institutional depositors are demanding higher rates on their deposits, putting pressure on US bank profit margins and signalling that lenders are running out of room to wring more revenue from tighter monetary policy. As the US Federal Reserve has aggressively increased rates, large American banks, in particular, have been able to increase what

7/18/2023, 11:08:56 PM What to watch in Asia today George Russell in Hong Kong Shoppers walk past a clothing store in an Auckland retail mall. New Zealand releases second-quarter inflation data on Wednesday © Brendon O’Hagan/Bloomberg Events: It’s a busy day for the regional shipping industry with the three-day Intermodal Asia, a trade fair for

Vladimir Putin ordered the seizure of Danone and Carlsberg’s Russian operations after businessmen close to the Kremlin expressed an interest in the assets, according to people close to the decision. On Tuesday the government appointed Yakub Zakriev, Chechnya’s agriculture minister, as head of the Danone business and installed Teimuraz Bolloev, a longtime friend of Putin,

Tata Motors is poised to announce plans to build a flagship battery factory in the UK to supply Jaguar Land Rover’s electric cars, according to people briefed on the Indian group’s plans. Tata, owner of JLR, has chosen a site in Somerset in south-west England for the gigafactory over a rival location in Spain, and

South Africa has claimed it cannot arrest Vladimir Putin at a planned Brics summit in Johannesburg next month because Russia has threatened to “declare war” if the International Criminal Court warrant against its leader is enforced. President Cyril Ramaphosa said in court papers publicly released on Tuesday that “Russia has made it clear that arresting

The UK is “over the worst” of soaring food price inflation, according to the head of Ocado, but the online grocer warned that it would take time for prices to moderate. Tim Steiner, the group’s chief executive and co-founder, said interest rate rises, greater mortgage costs and higher wages would continue to put pressure on

Donald Trump said he was the target of a criminal probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, raising the possibility he could face fresh federal charges in the coming days. In a development he described as “horrifying”, Trump said he had received a letter from the US Department of Justice

Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation is as a crusading “trust buster”, standing up to business and battling corporate concentration in the early years of the 20th century.  The US president was also a frustrated regulator, who argued that “a succession of lawsuits is hopeless from the standpoint of working out a permanently satisfactory solution” to the issues

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. On this basis, closer western relations with India make good sense. Joe Biden’s warm embrace of the once-banned Narendra Modi, now its politically dominant prime minister, in Washington and Emmanuel Macron’s equally warm embrace of the Indian leader in Paris are aimed at forging a close relationship

Carbon prices are supposed to provide a readout of progress — or the lack of it — in the energy transition. The EU’s Emissions Trading System prices the element at about €86 per tonne of carbon at present, close to historic peaks. That looks odd to one trader, Per Lekander at Clean Energy Transition. He