News

A growing number of Tory MPs with slim majorities are cutting back on the time they are spending in Westminster in a bid to shore up their electoral prospects in their constituencies, as gloom grips the party ahead of the next election. US pollster Frank Luntz told Tory MPs in a briefing last week that

Greeks vote on Sunday for the second time in less than two months in a general election likely to bring back a centre-right government led by former prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. In the week ahead of the election, Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party led the polls at more than 40 per cent, followed by the leftwing

Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin and his troops were withdrawing from southern Russia on Sunday after reaching a deal with Moscow to end his armed uprising after the biggest crisis of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. Prizoghin himself maintained a rare silence after calling an end to his insurrection on Saturday evening, though the Kremlin said he would

Vladimir Putin vowed to punish Yevgeny Prigozhin for “treason” over the warlord’s armed uprising. Instead, the former Kremlin caterer and his Wagner group have got off all but scot free after launching the first coup attempt in Russia for three decades. Prigozhin’s failed putsch ended abruptly, but it still exposed deep flaws at the heart

The first armed uprising attempted in Russia in three decades started with a crackly voice-note left on the Telegram messenger app.  It was warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, accusing the army’s leadership of “murdering tens of thousands of Russian soldiers” as a result of their disastrous invasion of Ukraine. Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group of mercenaries

The images that defined Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a leader were filmed on February 25 last year. As Russian troops closed in on Kyiv, the Ukrainian president walked the streets of the city with his close colleagues, reassuring citizens that: “All of us are here, protecting our independence and our country.” Now contrast that with Vladimir

A special convention on Scottish independence over the weekend marked a chance for the country’s first minister Humza Yousaf to reset his Scottish National party’s strategy for leaving the UK after a damaging financing scandal and the sudden resignation of his predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon. But in his first major speech to party members since replacing

Vladimir Putin has survived the most serious threat to his authority in two decades as Russia’s paramount leader. Yet the aborted rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner paramilitaries has laid bare the utter folly of the war Putin unleashed against his neighbour. The Kremlin is bogged down in a conflict it cannot win,

Rishi Sunak has warned that high public sector pay rises would be “giving with one hand” and “taking away with the other” by fuelling higher inflation, in a sign the government may override the recommendations of independent pay review bodies. The UK prime minister spoke out in the wake of reports in The Times newspaper

Governments around the world should raise taxes or cut public spending to help central banks tame inflation and mitigate the risk of a financial crisis, the Bank for International Settlements has said. The central bankers’ bank, which often operates as an informal mouthpiece for the institutions, said governments were “testing the boundaries of what might

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang met Russian deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko on Sunday as Beijing tries to gauge the impact of warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s insurrection on the political stability of one of its closest strategic allies. Chinese state media said the pair, who were pictured smiling and walking together after their meeting in Beijing,

The aborted insurrection of warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin saves Russia from a possible civil war, regime change and the collapse of its war effort — the 1917 revolution scenario conjured up by President Vladimir Putin on Saturday morning. But the drama in Russia still brings benefits and potential advantages for Ukraine as it seeks to push

Europe’s bank resolution authority is pushing policymakers to provide more “firepower” to protect depositors and rethink how lenders are wound down after recent failures underscored the need for swift and decisive action in a crisis. Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion in March prompted the US to invoke emergency powers to guarantee immediate full repayment of all

Highway restrictions were still in place in Moscow and the Tula region south of the Russian capital on Sunday morning, the country’s federal road agency reported, more than 12 hours after Yevgeny Prigozhin ended his armed uprising. Video reports from Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency showed roads reopened around the headquarters of the southern military

The 820,000km of electricity cables criss-crossing Britain have proved a solid investment for those who swooped on the electricity network sector post-privatisation in 1990.  International investors including Warren Buffett, Li Ka-shing and major global infrastructure funds have enjoyed the comfort of owning regulated monopolies in a relatively sleepy sector that attracts less of the political

Expert network consulting company Gerson Lehrman Group has become the latest due diligence firm to cut jobs in China as Beijing intensifies scrutiny of the sector on national security grounds. US-based GLG, which maintains a network of specialists that global investors can tap to do due diligence on transactions, began laying off China staff last

Oil and gas majors are stepping up efforts to break into lithium to diversify beyond fossil fuels as hopes rise over a technological breakthrough to produce the metal critical for electric car batteries. ExxonMobil, Schlumberger, Occidental Petroleum and Equinor are exploring whether their core skills of pumping, processing and reinjecting underground fluids such as oil

The 20-storey tower at 529 Fifth Avenue stands out from the other buildings around Grand Central Station for the surreal pink designs of an Alice in Wonderland-inspired art exhibit installed to fill vacant retail space on its ground floor. It is also remarkable as one among a small number of towers that have recently changed

Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has said his Wagner mercenaries had abandoned their insurrection against the country’s armed forces just hours before a potential assault on Moscow, signalling a possible end to the first coup attempt in Russia for three decades. In a deal brokered by Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin said his convoy of troops,

A private business held by the new owner of Britishvolt has been raided by Australian authorities over suspected tax fraud, throwing uncertainty over plans to press ahead with a UK battery factory. Australian entrepreneur David Collard purchased parts of defunct Britishvolt out of administration this year, with the promise of reviving its plans to build