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Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has been spending time in Russia, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said, despite a peace deal with Moscow under which he had agreed to relocate to Belarus. Prigozhin’s Wagner Group fighters had also not been transferred as the deal specified, Lukashenko claimed, while suggesting the mercenary leader was unlikely to face repercussions

Last Saturday evening, I went out to the eastern Parisian suburb of Bagnolet to watch the riots. The night before, demonstrators had burnt a wall of the local police station. The image spread across social media. Working-class Bagnolet had elected communist mayors from 1928 until 2014. Today, like most Parisian suburbs, it’s inhabited by an

Ukraine’s president has vowed to retaliate after a Russian missile attack on Lviv in the early hours of Thursday killed at least four people, destroyed apartment buildings and shattered the relative calm in the western city that sits near the EU border. “There will definitely be a response to the enemy. A strong one,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote

European stocks fell and yields on US government debt rose on Thursday after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting indicated the central bank would resume interest rate increases to stamp out high US inflation. The pan-European Stoxx 600 lost 1.2 per cent, edging towards its lowest point since May, while France’s Cac 40

Meta unveiled its long-awaited competitor to Twitter on Wednesday, which chief executive Mark Zuckerberg pitched as a “friendly” alternative to the struggling social media platform, in a move intended to draw users and revenues from Elon Musk’s company. The app, called Threads, is a “text-based conversation app” where users are able to publish posts up

Banks are facing pressure to improve their savings offering after being accused of pocketing the difference on higher lending rates. The Financial Conduct Authority will convene chief executives of the UK’s largest providers on Thursday as it challenges them to move further on cash savings. Banks have faced questions over their savings deals after the

The throngs of cheering football fans have long gone, but reminders of Qatar’s giddy moment on the global stage still dot Doha seven months on. There are the spectacular stadiums that hosted last year’s World Cup, most of which are waiting to be either downsized or repurposed; one into a wedding complex, others into mall

Russia’s covert drone partnership with Iran has included close co-operation on a new factory in the Russian province of Tatarstan, where Moscow has converted an agricultural unmanned aerial vehicle maker to supply its war effort in Ukraine. Albatross, the company operating on a key site for Russo-Iranian collaboration, has produced reconnaissance drones for President Vladimir

This week, Toyota shares continued their cruise towards an all-time high, building on a rise of almost 30 per cent since the start of the year and blown by a following wind, according to Refinitiv data, of 17 “buy” recommendations from analysts.  Improbable stuff, perhaps, for a century-old leviathan whose 2022 sales of pure battery

Europe’s workhorse Ariane 5 rocket blasted off for the last time on Wednesday, ending a 27-year programme by sending two military communications satellites into orbit. The 53-metre three-stage launcher blasted off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on its 117th mission. The programme has deployed 239 satellites since the first launch in 1996. Ariane

Federal Reserve officials signalled they intend to resume interest rate increases amid a growing consensus that more tightening is needed to stamp out high inflation in the world’s largest economy.  According to minutes from June’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, “almost all” officials who participated said that “additional increases” in the Fed’s benchmark interest

The UK’s major banks are on the government’s naughty step. On Thursday, the likes of HSBC, NatWest, Lloyds and Barclays are to be hauled in front of regulators at the Financial Conduct Authority. They face accusations of “profiteering” for not adequately passing through the Bank of England’s hefty interest rate increases to savers, while mortgage

In the old days, the Australian cricketers’ normally quadrennial tours of the UK followed a languid pattern: preparatory games around the shires culminating in five “Ashes” Test matches against England at decent intervals in high summer. This year the whole thing is being squeezed into six weeks without touching the prime holiday month of August

Like an admonitory digit pointing skyward, the chart of UK gilt yields stretches higher. Bad news for borrowers. Great news for the previously moribund market in annuities. Annuities pay investors, typically retirees, a fixed income derived from gilts in return for a lump sum. It is a tricky, capital-intense business dominated by a few insurers.

The UK has paid the highest borrowing cost on two-year debt this century at an auction of £4bn of gilts, as the recent surge in bond yields feeds through to the government’s finances. Gilt prices have slumped in the past few weeks, pushing yields sharply higher, as stubbornly high inflation stokes expectations that the Bank

Britain may not be broken, to borrow an opposition slogan, but it is badly managed. Contrary to national myths, its civil service is not a Rolls-Royce institution and the NHS, its 75th anniversary marked with a church service, is not the envy of the world.  There are two overarching themes behind the malaise — money

If Rome’s oligarchs could have travelled to the future, they might have learned a trick or two from the US Ivy League. It is hard to think of a better system of elite perpetuation than that practised by America’s top universities. Last week the US Supreme Court ended affirmative action in US higher education —

European stocks followed Asia lower on Wednesday, after service sector data from China fell below expectations, raising concerns that the world’s second-largest economy was struggling to recover after years of severe pandemic restrictions. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 lost 0.4 per cent, dragged down by declines in basic materials and technology stocks, while France’s Cac 40

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia might be preparing to blow up part of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest such facility in Europe, as Kyiv’s military reported incremental gains in its southern and eastern counteroffensive. “The Russian military has placed objects resembling explosives on the roof of several power units of the

The Financial Conduct Authority has publicly confirmed its investigation into Crispin Odey and Odey Asset Management for the first time and defended its “intensive” oversight of the hedge fund group. In a letter to the Treasury select committee published on Wednesday, FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi said that while there was a limit to how