The writer is a science commentator It is not quite “partial resurrection”, as some have dramatically dubbed it, but the novel technique does involve restarting limited blood circulation in organ donors who have just been declared dead. The procedure, which sustains organs inside the body rather than on external machines, has stirred global interest over
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The governor of the Bank of England has conceded there are “very big lessons to learn” in setting monetary policy after the central bank failed to forecast the recent rise and persistence of inflation. Along with other members of the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee, Andrew Bailey told the House of Commons Treasury select committee on
Allen & Overy has been seeking to crack the US legal market for decades. Partners at the London firm on Sunday joined hastily convened calls to learn it had finally struck a transformative deal: a $3.4bn merger with New York law firm Shearman & Sterling. The tie-up, secretly brokered in a matter of weeks by
The UK will ban from next January most international students from bringing family members with them as part of a wider plan to reduce net migration. The measure, which will apply to all international students except those undertaking postgraduate research courses such as PhDs, comes as the government is braced for a sharp rise in
The UK will escape a recession this year, the IMF said on Tuesday, adding that the country’s economy had been “buoyed by resilient demand in the context of declining energy prices”. But the fund cautioned that Britain risked being stuck with persistent inflation unless interest rates stayed high for longer. “Economic activity has slowed significantly
Alastair Campbell advised Tony Blair through consecutive landslide election victories in the UK. He believes the Labour party should be pointing out the failure of Brexit directly, not just elliptically. Matthew Parris of The Times is the columnist I admire over all others. He urges the Liberal Democrats to stop hedging and to run as
European and Asian equities slipped on Tuesday as investors remained concerned about a potential US debt default, with politicians failing to strike a deal on Monday. The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 index opened 0.3 per cent lower, as did Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac 40. London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.2 per cent. In Asia, China’s
The UK government borrowed more than expected at the start of the 2023-24 financial year as rising social security benefits and debt interest pushed up public spending. Public sector net borrowing stood at £25.6bn in April, higher than the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimate of £22.4bn and £11.9bn more than a year earlier. Tax receipts
Large asset management groups are piling back into fixed income to lock in the higher yields on offer after a “cataclysmic” period of performance for bonds last year. A steep rise in US interest rates over the past 12 months sent bond prices tumbling but has now left yields on Treasury notes higher than they
Boeing’s boss has warned that new climate-friendly biofuels will “never achieve the price of jet fuel”, pouring cold water on a central pillar of the aviation sector’s strategy to slash emissions. Airlines say sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) — made from food waste such as cooking oil and plants — can bring rapid decarbonisation by replacing
Private equity groups are increasingly selling shares in portfolio companies at a discount to the price at which they went public, in a sign they do not expect stock market valuations to regain their previous highs soon. So-called follow-on offerings of shares in previously listed companies are a key way for private equity groups to
In March last year, Steve Daines, a Republican politician from Montana, discussed the growing role of India at a hearing of the Senate banking committee. He encouraged the US trade representative to start negotiating a trade deal with New Delhi and cited a recent visit to encourage exports and meet “leading technology companies”. What he
The writer is CEO of Google and Alphabet This year, generative AI has captured the world’s imagination. Already, millions of people are using it to boost creativity and improve productivity. Meanwhile, more and more start-ups and organisations are bringing AI-powered products and technologies to market faster than ever. AI is the most profound technology humanity
A group made up of banks, tech companies and telecoms providers is launching a trial to gather intelligence on scammers in an effort to tackle the most common type of crime in England and Wales. Stop Scams UK, a cross-industry group, aims to launch its pilot scheme next month. It comes after experts and companies
The new owner of Silicon Valley Bank has sued HSBC and several former employees for more than $1bn, claiming the group “engineered a scheme to plunder” SVB of top bankers and confidential information. First Citizens, which bought SVB after its dramatic failure, claims in the lawsuit that HSBC and a former senior SVB banker co-ordinated
People in the UK are among the least confident that the financial authorities will bring inflation under control quickly, according to an Ipsos Mori survey of 29 countries around the world seen by the Financial Times. The results show that six in 10 people surveyed in May thought it would take at least a year
Labour is ready to force pension funds to invest in a proposed £50bn “future growth fund”, as the party aims to boost the amount of capital available for fast-growing UK companies. Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, said she did not believe Labour would need to mandate retirement schemes to invest in the new fund because of
The heir to the Prada fashion empire said rising geopolitical tensions have made a plan to list in its homebase of Milan more important to maintain “bridges” between Europe and China more than a decade after it went public in Hong Kong. The Financial Times first reported last year that the $19.3bn group, which owns
If you live in a rich country, all things being equal, you are more likely to live alone, more likely to suffer from depression or anxiety and less likely to have children. One movement that thinks it has the solution to these problems is national conservatism. Its message is that politicians should champion the constitutional,
The crisis of confidence afflicting the London equity market has raised important questions about the growth environment for UK companies. The sense of treading water is not limited to the stock exchange, though. Some senior figures in London’s specialist market for insurance and reinsurance, centred around Lloyd’s of London, have warned for years that sluggish
Here is a status update Facebook did not want to post. The EU has fined its parent company Meta €1.2bn for breaching data protection laws. The bloc ruled Meta’s legal basis for transferring data harvested in the EU to the US does not hold water. It must end the practice pronto. Meta is unlikely to