News

The UK will place six southern African countries back on its red list of travel restrictions, after an apparent surge in cases of a heavily mutated coronavirus variant caused alarm among global health officials. Travellers returning from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Eswatini will be forced to quarantine for 10 days at a

President Joe Biden has announced the release of oil from the US’s strategic stockpile in a bid to drive down petrol prices and snuff out a crude market rally that the White House has said poses a threat to the global economic recovery. The White House said on Tuesday the president was authorising the release

Joe Biden has nominated Jay Powell to serve a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve, opting for continuity at a delicate moment for the US economy as it grapples with persistently high inflation and a patchy labour market recovery. Lael Brainard, considered Powell’s fiercest competitor for the top job, was tapped for the

China’s hypersonic weapon test in July included a technological advance that enabled it to fire a missile as it approached its target travelling at least five times the speed of sound — a capability no country has previously demonstrated. Pentagon scientists were caught off guard by the advance, which allowed the hypersonic glide vehicle, a

Joe Biden’s battle to pass a $1.75tn package to enhance the social safety net and combat climate change moves to the thorny terrain of the US Senate, after clearing the House of Representatives. The House on Friday passed the sweeping Build Back Better bill, which includes subsidies for early childhood education, tax credits for families

The vice-chair of the US Federal Reserve on Friday opened the door to a faster withdrawal of its massive bond-buying programme, suggesting the central bank could take earlier-than-expected action to tame inflation. Richard Clarida said the Federal Open Market Committee could consider discussing the pace of the planned “taper” at its upcoming policy meeting in

Nancy Pelosi said the US House of Representatives would press ahead with a vote on Joe Biden’s $1.75tn Build Back Better bill on Thursday night, after an independent government agency said the package would add $367bn to the federal deficit over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office, which provides cost estimates for big legislation,

US President Joe Biden has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the country’s biggest oil companies are engaged in “potentially illegal conduct” that is resulting in higher gasoline prices for Americans. In a letter to FTC chair Lina Khan, Biden said there was “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behaviour” in the market, noting

Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have agreed to hold talks aimed at reducing tensions, as US anxiety grows at China’s expanding nuclear arsenal and its recent test of a hypersonic weapon. Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, said the US and Chinese presidents had discussed the need for nuclear “strategic stability” talks in their virtual

Joe Biden has signed his flagship $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill into law in a big legislative victory for the US president at a time when his approval ratings have hit an all-time low. At an event at the White House on Monday, Biden said that the passing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would

Business groups joined climate activists in expressing frustration that national governments were not moving aggressively enough to tackle climate change, after the COP26 agreement was watered down in the final minutes. Nearly 200 countries at the climate summit in Glasgow reached a deal late on Saturday night, and agreed on the rules for implementing the

A last-minute intervention from India and China weakened the move to end coal power and fossil fuel subsidies in the Glasgow Climate Pact in the closing stages of the UN COP26 summit. Countries agreed to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal, in wording that was watered down several times in the course of the

Jes Staley exchanged 1,200 emails with Jeffrey Epstein over a four-year period with content that included unexplained terms such as “snow white”, according to people familiar with the correspondence between the former Barclays chief executive and the convicted sex offender. Staley resigned from Barclays last week after seeing preliminary conclusions of an investigation by UK

Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to cut the transit of gas and goods through Belarus to Europe if the EU imposes further sanctions on his regime over the migrant crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border. The Belarus president was responding to an announcement by Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, on Wednesday that the bloc would

US consumer prices are expected to have surged in October at their fastest pace in three decades, as bottlenecks and other supply-chain disruptions intensify and inflationary pressures broaden. Consensus forecasts compiled by Bloomberg indicate that the consumer price index to be published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday rose 5.9 per cent in

US industrial group General Electric is to split itself into three public companies from 2023, a big step in chief executive Larry Culp’s plan to streamline the sprawling conglomerate. The companies will focus on healthcare, energy and aviation. GE Healthcare will be spun off in 2023, with GE retaining a 19.9 per cent stake in

The Federal Reserve warned on Monday that stresses in the Chinese real estate sector “posed some risk to the US financial system”, pointing to heavily indebted property companies like Evergrande as a potential source of global contagion. “Given the size of China’s economy and financial system as well as its extensive trade linkages with the

China reported dozens of new local coronavirus infections on Saturday, a day after the government reaffirmed its commitment to strict measures designed to limit the pandemic’s spread within its borders. The country’s National Health Commission on Sunday reported 74 new cases for the previous day, of which 50 were locally transmitted. A wave of cases

Investors propelled US stocks to a record high last week, buoyed by declining unemployment and advancements in the treatment of Covid-19 giving hope to a resurgent economy. The S&P 500 index of blue-chip US stocks, seen as a benchmark for the health of corporate America, rose 2 per cent for the week to Friday, its

Nancy Pelosi stared down progressives in her own party on Friday, vowing to press ahead with a vote on a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill while delaying consideration of a separate, larger social spending package popular with the leftwing of the Democratic party. The move breaks a longstanding promise to move the two bills through Congress