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Chinese officials estimate about 250mn people, or 18 per cent of the population, were infected with Covid-19 in the first 20 days of December, as Beijing abruptly dismantled restrictions that had contained the disease for almost three years. The estimates — including 37mn people, or 2.6 per cent of the population, who were infected on
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The UK faces a fresh wave of strike action in the new year, as nurses, ambulance staff and rail workers prepare to walk out over pay. The PCS union, which represents striking civil servants including Border Force staff, on Friday warned industrial action would be ramped up even further if the government continued to refuse
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Britain has joined the international criticism of Joe Biden’s massive US package of green subsidies, warning they are protectionist and will hit UK-based makers of electric vehicles, batteries and other renewables. Kemi Badenoch, the UK’s international trade secretary, has written to her US counterpart, Katherine Tai, to protest at the structure of the Biden administration’s
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The congressional committee probing last year’s violent attack on the US Capitol has voted to recommend that the US Department of Justice pursue criminal charges against former president Donald Trump for his role in the failed insurrection. During its final public hearing on Monday, the bipartisan nine-member panel unanimously said Trump should be prosecuted for
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Britain is bracing for one of the most disruptive weeks of strike action in recent history after the government signalled its determination to face down the unions despite calls for pay negotiations from health leaders and some Conservative MPs. Nurses, ambulance workers, customs and immigration staff, postal and rail workers will all walk out in
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David Cameron, Britain’s former prime minister, is returning to public life with a new job teaching politics at a university in the Gulf state of Abu Dhabi. Cameron will lecture students on “practising politics and government in the age of disruption” for a three-week course in January at the New York University Abu Dhabi. It
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The Bank of England raised interest rates on Thursday by half a percentage point to 3.5 per cent, the highest level in 14 years, and warned that further tightening of monetary policy was likely. In a vote showing a majority on the central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee for “forceful” action against high inflation, six of
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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is exploring plans to keep providing all British businesses with help for their energy bills once winter has passed, in what would be a break with current government policy to limit such aid to “vulnerable industries” after March. The potential change in the government’s support package for business, which several officials said
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Sam Bankman-Fried has been accused of engineering “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history” as US prosecutors filed criminal charges against the founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, the US Department of Justice charged Bankman-Fried with eight counts including conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers and
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New UK government proposals for a US-style register of “foreign influence” risks destroying Britain’s reputation as a global investment hub and will unnecessarily criminalise bank workers, academics and charities, a lobby group has warned. The proposed Foreign Influence Registration Scheme is expected to become law in the new year as part of a new National
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The European parliament is at the centre of a spreading corruption scandal after Belgian police seized €600,000 in cash and detained two MEPs as part of an international investigation into claims that football World Cup host Qatar sought to buy influence. A Belgian judge charged four unnamed people on Sunday with “participation in a criminal
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