When Antony Knights and his wife, Louise Firth, first noticed that their British Airways flight to Berlin from London’s Heathrow airport was listed as delayed, they were neither surprised nor very concerned. But shortly afterwards they and others waiting for the flight, on May 25, were shocked to be told to leave the airport terminal.
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US defence secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday criticised China for conducting risky aerial intercepts over the South China Sea and warned that Washington would not be deterred by dangerous behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region. China was conducting “an alarming number of risky intercepts of US and allied aircraft flying lawfully in international airspace”, Austin said
How bad was your week? Well fear not. Rajesh Vishwas is here to make you feel better. The Indian government official was recently suspended after he ordered a reservoir to be drained so he could retrieve his mobile phone, which had fallen in when he tried to take a selfie while picnicking with friends. Taking
A train crash in eastern India has killed more than 200 people, officials said, in one of the country’s deadliest railway accidents in decades. At least 233 people were killed and 900 injured in a collision involving multiple trains in the state of Odisha on Friday night, according to the state’s chief secretary Pradeep Jena.
The six Glazer siblings could retain stakes in Manchester United in a proposed phased takeover of the football club by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is seeking a way through the share structure and family dynamics that have complicated the deal. The Glazer family started a strategic review more than six months ago but the process
The train from London to Amsterdam is a 3hr 52m joke at the expense of the nation state. Four countries zip past without so much as a courtesy announcement over the speaker at each crossing of a border. Staff of indeterminate citizenship offer drinks in three languages. The onscreen message (“Welcome à bord d’Eurostar”) is a
In the circle of a therapy session in an 18th century Scottish country house are half-a-dozen recovering addicts. Many recall, at their lowest points, battling chronic depression and contemplating suicide. The patients, all male, share harrowing stories of dealing with a newfangled addiction: compulsive crypto trading. Some say their crypto addiction combined with an alcohol
This week five men were found guilty of illegally streaming live Premier League games and sent to jail for a total of more than 30 years. The UK-based fraud had more than 50,000 customers and generated £7mn over five years. The Premier League, which brought the case as an unusual private prosecution, takes these matters
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman spent almost two decades as a relatively low-profile member of Saudi Arabia’s Opec delegation. But since becoming the first royal to serve as the kingdom’s oil minister in 2019, he has made a name for himself, though not one of his choosing: traders have recently taken to calling him the “prickly
And relax. After months of performative wrangling, the showboats of US politics have finally agreed to give the country more leeway in borrowing, a move that extinguishes the risk of a potentially cataclysmic default on its government bonds. Averting a disaster in the world’s core so-called risk-free asset, this is victory for common sense. If
The writer is associate professor in cardiometabolic health at the University of Exeter and chairs the BMA Board of Science Smoking kills. In a world where physicians cannot achieve consensus on other major health threats, this unambiguous fact is something that we can all agree on. Tobacco use is the biggest cause of preventable disease
Rishi Sunak has been warned by a leading think-tank against entering a “subsidy race” with the US and EU in an attempt to defend the British car industry. The UK is locked in a subsidy battle with Spain, as the prime minister tries to persuade Indian conglomerate Tata to build a new gigafactory in Britain
Almost a year on from England’s victory in Euro 2022, women’s football is preparing for its next big showcase event: the Uefa Women’s Champions League final. On Saturday, FC Barcelona Femení and VfL Wolfsburg will battle it out in Eindhoven in front of a sellout crowd of almost 35,000 fans. The match between the Catalan
CIA director Bill Burns travelled to China last month, a clandestine visit by one of President Joe Biden’s most trusted officials that signals how concerned the White House had become about deteriorating relations between Beijing and Washington. Five people familiar with the situation said Burns, a former top diplomat who is frequently entrusted with delicate
The writer is an FT contributing editor and writes the Chartbook newsletter Economic policymaking in the US, the most important economy in the world, has a kaleidoscopic quality. At the start of the year, the world was fixated on the Federal Reserve, interest rates and banks. Shake the kaleidoscope and a few weeks later national
In just two days this week, Elon Musk had more top-level Chinese meetings than Biden administration officials have had in months. The Tesla and Twitter boss secured meetings with three government ministers as well as influential Shanghai Communist party chief Chen Jining. He reportedly even met vice-premier Ding Xuexiang, a confidant of President Xi Jinping.
Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said he will give the Covid-19 inquiry on Friday his unredacted WhatsApp messages shared with the Cabinet Office, in a swipe at Rishi Sunak. Johnson added in a letter to inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett that he would like to hand over other “relevant” material, including correspondence from
OK readers. We’ve been together for six months now and if any of you still have your money in an active fund — you know, where you actually let portfolio managers choose things all on their own — I haven’t done my job. There is no excuse for it. Actually, there’s one. If your manager
Emmanuel Macron deployed a novel tactic this week to try to repair France’s frayed relations with Europe’s eastern flank — call it “strategic humility”. In a speech at a security conference in Bratislava, the French president all but apologised for not heeding warnings issued from Warsaw to Tallinn about the risks posed by Vladimir Putin’s
Good morning. What is the government’s legal battle with the official Covid-19 public inquiry really about? The story that some of Boris Johnson’s allies want to tell is that it is about the relationship between Johnson and Rishi Sunak, but that isn’t quite right. The line that Labour is running with is that it shows
European stocks rallied on Friday after investors took heart from US congressional passage of a deal to lift the country’s debt ceiling and suggestions from Federal Reserve officials that the central bank would halt interest rate rises. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 rose 0.5 per cent, extending gains from the previous day, while France’s Cac 40