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A few years ago, we were told that self-driving cars were just around the corner and would soon be pulling up at the kerbside. Then, when the fiendish complexities of developing and deploying the technology became clearer, we discovered they were stuck in heavy traffic many blocks away. But it would be wrong to conclude

Do you remember how temperamental computers used to be? When they would crash for no reason, and you had to click “Save” every five minutes for fear they would wipe all your work? I felt that old frustration recently on a visit to a London secondary school, where I was helping teach a class about

US petrol prices have dropped below $4 a gallon for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as fears of a looming recession put the brakes on soaring fuel markets, tempering rampant inflation. The average price of a gallon of gasoline tumbled to $3.99 on Thursday, according to motoring group AAA. That leaves the

Credit Suisse has stepped up its legal fight against SoftBank, as the embattled Swiss lender seeks to recoup hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of its wealthiest clients that it had lent through Greensill Capital, the defunct finance firm. Credit Suisse lawyers applied to the English High Court last week, seeking permission to initiate

The thick plumes of black smoke that swirled over an air base in Crimea sent scores of sun-seekers running from the Russia-occupied peninsula, clogging traffic on the highway leading to the only bridge to their homeland. Ukrainian officials retweeted the videos of panicked Russian tourists racing for the exits. One assessed that nine Russian fighter

Manrika Khaira regularly broadcasts live on TikTok to her following of more than half a million people. She uses the social media platform to demonstrate how she gets ready in cheerful tutorial-style videos, while marketing cheap or discounted beauty products. In one livestream, testing out some heated hair crimpers sent to her, she realises her

The last time I was truly, painfully, bored, in the way that I remember from childhood — watching the minutes tick by as if they were hours; desperately craving stimuli other than the contemptible ones on offer; feeling an increasing urge to somehow vent the frustration physically, vocally, or preferably both — was almost exactly

Perched on the side of the bridge connecting the island of Palm Beach to the Florida mainland, a day after Donald Trump’s nearby Mar-a-Lago resort was searched by the FBI, Mary Ann Robinson held a White Claw alcoholic drink in one hand and railed against federal law enforcement. “When they raided our president[’s home], I

How much could your household finances be squeezed in the next few years? The answer could well come down to the size of your mortgage. If you’ve borrowed a lot of money to buy your dream home, rising interest rates have the potential to curb the spending power of the middle classes much more than

A top Federal Reserve official has warned it is far too early for the US central bank to “declare victory” in its fight against elevated inflation after new data showed a reprieve in consumer price pressures. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco branch of the Fed, did

Walt Disney defied concerns about a slowdown in the streaming industry by adding 14.4mn new subscribers to its Disney Plus service in the third quarter, pushing its total number of paying streaming customers to 221mn — slightly ahead of Netflix. But Disney reduced its long-term guidance for its total number of Disney Plus subscribers due

Donald Trump refused to answer questions at a deposition in a New York state probe into his businesses on Wednesday, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination amid deepening legal woes. Trump said in a statement that the “current administration and many prosecutors across the country have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency”, leaving

Britain’s electricity generators will face pressure from ministers to invest their “extraordinary profits” in new green energy projects, rather than paying out the windfall to shareholders. Some have made huge profits from surging electricity prices that have risen in line with the soaring cost of gas, even if the power they produce comes from renewables

Liz Truss on Wednesday vowed to do “all that I can” to help households struggling with the cost of living crisis, in a change of tone that her Tory leadership rival Rishi Sunak described as a “major U-turn on the biggest issue facing the country”. The foreign secretary has said she favours tax cuts over

Federal prosecutors have charged an Iranian national with plotting to assassinate John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, on US soil. The US Department of Justice said it believed 45-year-old Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards who also goes by the name Mehdi Rezayi, had attempted to arrange a “murder for

For months ministers have been insisting British households and businesses have no reason to fear the possibility of gas shortages or the lights going out this winter. But with most of the focus of the energy crisis so far on how consumers will cope with soaring energy bills, Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, has had

The US consumer price index rose by 8.5 per cent year-on-year in July, a slower annual increase compared to June, as inflationary pressures eased on the back of lower petrol prices. CPI data released on Wednesday showed no increase between June and July, compared to a 1.3 per cent monthly increase recorded a month ago.

If only Britain had had a Conservative government for the past decade instead of the crypto-socialists who botched everything, including Brexit. Ever since his resignation last year, David Frost, Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, former cabinet minister, peer and latterly ferocious evangelist of the lost creed of true Toryism, has been compiling a charge sheet against

SoftBank expects to post a gain of more than $34bn by turning over a chunk of its holdings in the Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba, marking a historic shift in the Japanese group’s relationship with its best-known investment. SoftBank had made a series of complex derivative deals that allowed it to raise cash while retaining the option

Perhaps we need a new rule. When a politician complains that regulators are being too slow, too cautious or a bit of a “dog in the manger” about overhauling insurance rules for the glorious benefit of Brexit Britain, they should be asked to explain the issues involved. Rather as political wannabes are regularly asked to