Janet Yellen’s China speech has been a long time in coming. It has been almost a year since Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said the country was “the most serious long-term threat” to world order. Yellen’s phrasing was more emollient. The US Treasury secretary spelt out that the administration of Joe Biden had
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Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg vowed that the US-led alliance would stand with Kyiv “for as long as it takes” in its defence against Russian aggression, during his first trip to Ukraine since the war began 14 months ago. Stoltenberg’s visit comes at a crucial time in the conflict as Kyiv pleads for more western weaponry
The writer is founder of Sifted, an FT-backed site about European start-ups The British mathematician IJ Good was among the first to speculate about what would happen when computers outsmarted humans. One day, he wrote, we would build an ultra-intelligent machine that could design an even more intelligent machine by itself, triggering an “intelligence explosion”.
Russian paramilitary group Wagner, notorious for its brutal role in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, unsuccessfully asked China for supplies of weapons earlier this year, according to a leaked US intelligence report. Representatives from Wagner, which is controlled by close Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, “sought munitions and equipment” from China in “early 2023”, according to
The CBI said on Thursday it had given the police “additional information relating to a report of a serious criminal offence”, worsening the reputational crisis that has engulfed the UK’s leading business lobby group. The organisation is embroiled in a scandal involving multiple allegations by employees about alleged workplace misconduct, including an alleged rape at
Black market drones have been used in military attacks for years. Drones have been heavily used in the Ukraine war too, prompting speculation that China was involved. Beijing has denied widespread reports that the country exported drones to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The speculation highlights China’s growing dominance in commercial drone manufacturing. The government
European stocks and Wall Street futures dipped in morning trade on Thursday as traders looked to companies’ first-quarter earnings for any impact from higher interest rates and last month’s banking crisis. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 slipped 0.4 per cent, Germany’s Dax lost 0.7 per cent and London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.2 per cent. In the
Imagine you were a senior Brexiter in 2016, a politician or a journalistic cheerleader. You’ll always remember that moment the night of the vote, when you realised you had achieved something historic. That’s rare for a politician and almost unheard of for a journalist. Because Brexit was decided by popular opinion, journalists, for once, mattered.
Instagram is relocating most of its staff, including the social media platform’s head Adam Mosseri, from London to New York as part of a widespread restructuring effort at parent company Meta. The photo app had been building a new hub in the UK in recent months, where its engineering and product teams are based, but
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak is considering whether to fire his deputy Dominic Raab over bullying allegations, after receiving an official report into the claims on Thursday. The report by Adam Tolley KC, a prominent employment lawyer, examines whether Raab, who is also justice secretary, has breached the ministerial code. A spokesman for Sunak said
Ukrainian infantrymen charged across a boggy field, Kalashnikovs raised, unleashing a flurry of bullets. “Move! Move! Move!” came the order. Concealed by the cloud from a smoke bomb, one soldier raised a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and fired at a target 50 metres away — and missed. The group’s trainer ordered them to run the drill
Google plans to introduce generative artificial intelligence into its advertising business over the coming months, as big tech groups rush to incorporate the groundbreaking technology into their products. According to an internal presentation to advertisers seen by the Financial Times, the Alphabet-owned company intends to begin using the AI to create novel advertisements based on
“Time for you to leave,” Salomon Brothers’ cigar-chomping chief executive John Gutfreund told Michael Bloomberg. With the $10mn he got as compensation for being fired, Bloomberg started a company, Innovative Market Systems, the next day. It was 1981, and computers were finally starting to take over Wall Street. Bloomberg, then 39, thought the time was
Whichever side of the Atlantic or the Irish Sea you live on, you probably heard a great deal of hype about Joe Biden’s “historic”, four-day “feels like I’m coming home” trip to the island of Ireland last week. If you live on the English side of these bodies of water, you probably heard the outpouring
The writer is founder and chief executive of Algebris Investments “Shoot first, ask questions later” has been an apt description of the US and European bank space in recent weeks. With calm returning, should investors be buying UK and European banks? The perhaps surprising answer is yes. Let me explain. Nerves have been frayed after
Elon Musk indicated he was willing to sacrifice Tesla’s profits in the short term in an aggressive push for market share, with the aim of making more money later when the company’s cars are fully autonomous and can earn extra fees by operating as “robotaxis”. The Tesla chief executive’s unconventional justification for why shareholders should
UK car insurance prices have risen a fifth in the past year and are now at their highest since 2011, as insurers demand higher premiums to cope with surging inflation in the cost of claims. The average policy now stands at £657, according to first-quarter figures from comparison website Confused.com, in partnership with insurance broker Willis
Britain’s prime minister did not disclose details of his wife’s stakes in a number of companies, according to the government’s updated register of ministerial interests. In a long-awaited update to the register, Rishi Sunak logged that his wife, Akshata Murty, was a “venture capital investor” with some direct shareholdings as well as owning a venture
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House, has detailed his plans for averting a looming crisis over the US debt ceiling for the first time, with a bill that would push the risk of a default into next year but would require the rolling back of several White House policies. McCarthy and House Republicans
A rebound in deposits at Western Alliance Bancorp, one of the midsized lenders that was seen as the most at risk after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last month, buoyed US regional bank stocks on Wednesday. Western Alliance said it had regained nearly $3bn in deposits in the past few weeks, or more than 40 per
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has been urged by the UK pensions industry not to force retirement schemes to invest in riskier and complex assets including fast-growing young British companies, and infrastructure. Hunt has said he would not be “instinctively comfortable” with ordering pension funds where to invest some of their money, but has not ruled out