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China will push the Brics bloc of emerging markets to become a full-scale rival to the G7 this week, as leaders from across the developing world gather to debate the forum’s biggest expansion in more than a decade. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has invited more than 60 heads of state and government to a

China is expected to make the biggest cuts this year to two of its core lending rates, as pressure mounts on policymakers and banks to reverse a trend of slowing momentum and revive flagging demand in the world’s second-biggest economy. The People’s Bank of China is set to announce reductions to both one-year and five-year

Bitcoin fell by nearly 8 per cent during an hour of frenzied trading on Thursday afternoon in the US, extending a day of losses that have reversed most of the cryptocurrency’s gains since June. The price of a token briefly fell to as low as $25,409, according to data from CoinMarketCap, before staging a partial

The US, Japan and South Korea are to create a leader-level hotline and hold annual military exercises as part of a historic trilateral agreement that will help Washington and its Asian allies boost deterrence against North Korea and China. President Joe Biden will announce the move with Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean

In this time of psychobabble, of therapeutic jargon and remote diagnosis, one mental condition is worth our focus for a moment. Treasury Brain. This is a cognitive defect that is said to afflict the finance ministry of the UK. Civil servants there, it is alleged, have an irrational aversion to ideas that incur upfront cost

“France cannot be France without greatness,” wrote Charles de Gaulle in the opening of his memoirs. His nation, he insisted, must always be in “the first rank”. Vladimir Putin feels the same way about Russia. Back when I was still able to visit that country, Fyodor Lukyanov — a foreign policy thinker close to Putin

Inflated shipping costs are enabling Russian companies to earn far more from crude oil sales to India than previously recognised, according to a Financial Times analysis which suggests that the charges may have raised more than $1bn in a single quarter. Russia has, until recently, appeared to comply on this route with western measures designed

Sly, Soviet-style jokes are enjoying a subtle revival on Chinese social media platforms. Their art resides in being too obscure for censors to understand yet clear enough for cynics to chuckle at their mockery. Some are so esoteric that their satire is confirmed only by the censors’ decision to delete them — echoing the cat-and-mouse

Sam Bankman-Fried has been taken into custody after a federal judge found that the FTX founder probably attempted to tamper with witnesses on two occasions while awaiting trial on fraud charges stemming from the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange. In a brief written order following a hearing in Manhattan federal court on Friday, Judge Lewis

US inflation in July is expected to have risen at roughly the same pace as in June, suggesting that price pressures in the world’s biggest economy are continuing to ease and strengthening the case for the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady at its next meeting in September.  The consumer price index (CPI) is

China’s ambassador to Washington has warned Beijing will retaliate against US national security measures targeted at the country, including a mechanism to screen inbound investment being prepared by the White House. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Xie Feng said China “cannot remain silent” while the US imposes sanctions and export controls that will make

Google and Universal Music are in talks to license artists’ melodies and voices for songs generated by artificial intelligence as the music business tries to monetise one of its biggest threats. The discussions, confirmed by four people familiar with the matter, aim to strike a partnership for an industry that is grappling with the implications

Russian forces carried out two strikes on the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk on Monday evening, hitting a popular hotel.  At least five people were killed and a further 31 injured, according to Ukraine’s interior ministry on Telegram.  In his nightly address, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had used short-range Iskander ballistic missiles to

The European Commission has approved €733bn in state support since March 2022 for businesses affected by the war in Ukraine and the green transition, an amount superseded in recent years only by subsidies approved during the Covid-19 pandemic. Germany accounts for almost half of total EU state aid funding approved under a temporary crisis scheme

The US and China are opening new lines of communication to tackle contentious issues, in one of the first signs of progress towards stabilising relations since secretary of state Antony Blinken visited Beijing in June. According to three people familiar with the situation, Washington and Beijing will create two working groups to focus on Asia-Pacific

Apple proved resilient in its latest quarter as the number of paying subscribers for its array of digital services crossed 1bn users worldwide, helping to lift profits from a year ago even as total revenue declined. The world’s largest company by market value said on Thursday that total revenue fell 1 per cent to $81.8bn

US prosecutors have charged Donald Trump in connection with attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the second federal indictment brought against the former president in as many months. Trump was charged with four criminal counts including conspiracy to defraud the US, to obstruct an official proceeding and to threaten individual rights, according

UK mortgage approvals rose unexpectedly in June, despite further increases in interest rates. Bank of England statistics showed net mortgage approvals for house purchases rose to 54,700 from 51,100 the previous month, while approvals for remortgaging rose to 39,100 from 34,100. Analysts had expected the housing market to slow in a month when stubbornly high

Western oil and gas majors are expected to face renewed scrutiny of their energy transition plans as the commodity crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine that supercharged profits for five consecutive quarters recedes. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies, Equinor and Eni each reported drops in second-quarter earnings this week of about 50 per cent compared

“I wish,” a longstanding US Democrat and environmentalist said to me recently, “that we’d never politicised global warming.” Even as extreme heat is demonstrating that no country will be immune from climate change, the politics are becoming more treacherous.  Parts of the right are mobilising to slow down the path to net zero, as inflation