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The UK government will extend its energy price cap for households by an additional three months as it seeks to shield consumers during the cost of living crisis. The Energy Price Guarantee, which has capped typical annual energy bills at £2,500 this winter, will continue from April to June, saving a typical household £160 during

China has named a general who is under US sanctions as its new defence minister, creating an additional hurdle for military dialogue as the two countries fret that geopolitical tensions could boil over into conflict. Li Shangfu, an aerospace engineer with little previous international exposure, was confirmed as the top military official on Sunday. His

More than 200 UK-based tech company executives have urged Downing Street to intervene after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which they warned poses an “existential threat to the UK tech sector”. The Bank of England moved to put the UK arm of SVB into insolvency late on Friday following the shutdown earlier in the

Something is going very wrong for teenagers. Between 1994 and 2010, the share of British teens who do not consider themselves likeable fell slightly from 6 per cent to 4 per cent; since 2010 it has more than doubled. The share who think of themselves as a failure, who worry a lot and who are

Three years ago this week, it sank in that this coronavirus thing was serious. I’d just attended a conference in London that, with hindsight, may have been a superspreader event. Hospitals were filling up. Several million deaths from the virus were — correctly — being predicted. Every plan you’d made was being cancelled. On March

Here is a thought experiment. If Taiwan did not exist, would the US and China still be at loggerheads? My hunch is yes. Antagonism between top dogs and rising powers is part of the human story. The follow-up is whether such tensions would persist if China were a democracy rather than a one-party state. That

China’s foreign minister has warned of a clash with the US unless Washington ceases its attempts to contain Beijing, highlighting the Chinese Communist party’s concerns over escalating tension between the rival superpowers. “If the US doesn’t hit the brakes and continues to barrel down the wrong track, no amount of guardrails can prevent the carriage

China will overhaul supervision of its financial system and bolster science and technology to try to catch up with the west, as Xi Jinping embarks on a third term as president with one of the biggest reforms of the state apparatus in years. The changes — part of a series of ministerial reforms to China’s

The UK government’s flagship pledge to build 40 new hospitals by 2030 has been hit by inflation and officials are debating which projects to delay as the NHS capital budget faces a shortfall of close to £2bn by 2027/8. As Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, prepares for the Budget on March 15, people close to the

Ukraine has appealed to the EU to send Kyiv 250,000 artillery shells a month to ease a critical shortage that it warns is limiting its progress on the battlefield. In a letter to his counterparts in the 27 member states on Friday, obtained by the Financial Times, Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov writes that his

Germany and Italy have blown apart an EU plan to ban internal combustion engines by 2035, as the European car industry’s heartlands mount a fightback against ambitious carbon goals. The two countries, the homes of Volkswagen, Fiat and Ferrari, are demanding exemptions for cars that run on synthetic fuels, potentially cushioning the blow for established

A reconnaissance group claiming to work for the Ukrainian military crossed into Russia and allegedly launched an attack on Thursday, prompting President Vladimir Putin to convene his security council and delay a planned trip out of Moscow. Russian authorities said on Thursday that the group had entered a village in Bryansk region near Russia’s border

UK house prices registered the largest decline in more than a decade last month as higher interest rates and the wider cost of living crisis hit demand, according to a closely watched survey. Property prices fell 1.1 per cent in February compared with the same month last year, the biggest drop since November 2012, and

The first anniversary of Russia’s assault on Ukraine has been greeted with soaring rhetoric. Notably, US president Joe Biden stated in Warsaw that “Our support for Ukraine will not waver, Nato will not be divided, and we will not tire. President Putin’s craven lust for land and power will fail. And the Ukrainian people’s love

The UK energy regulator has lowered the energy price cap by almost £1,000 for a typical home, but consumers will still end up with higher bills from April as the government reduces subsidies to households. The price cap, which normally governs the amount paid for gas and electricity bills for typical usage, will fall to

President Joe Biden’s speech in Warsaw was thickly coated in the kind of idealistic rhetoric many western Europeans discreetly roll their eyes at. Of Vladimir Putin, he said: “He thought autocrats like himself were tough and leaders of democracies were soft . . . And then, he met the iron will of America and the nations everywhere that refused

Joe Biden has said he did not think China would send weapons to Russia to help its military campaign in Ukraine, in comments that appeared to undercut claims from his top officials that Beijing was considering the idea. In an interview with ABC television on Friday that was aired on the evening of the anniversary

US stocks were on course for their biggest weekly drop in over two months on Friday, after the latest evidence of stubbornly high inflation in the world’s largest economy unnerved traders. The S&P 500 fell 1 per cent in morning trade while the Nasdaq 100 was down 1.9 per cent, with both indices deepening their

At a small rural farm about an hour’s drive from the Zambian capital city of Lusaka in late January, US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen stood before a gathering of farmers and told them she understood the destruction that global warming was causing. “We know that over the past decade, storms, floods, and droughts in Africa

Citigroup has forecast that UK inflation will plunge from double-digit rates to close to 2 per cent by the end of this year as rapid falls in gas prices give Rishi Sunak’s government hope of solving some of its biggest economic challenges. Citi said on Wednesday that consumer price inflation was likely to fall to