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Chinese and Russian strategic bombers flew over the Sea of Japan as Joe Biden attended a Quad summit in Tokyo, in a joint exercise the Japanese government denounced as “unacceptable”. The nuclear-capable bombers conducted a joint flight on Tuesday that began over the Sea of Japan as the US president was meeting his counterparts from

The energy shock sparked by the war in Ukraine has shown the need to overhaul green energy transition plans and maintain investment in oil and gas production, according to Saudi Aramco’s chief executive. Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Amin Nasser said under-investment in hydrocarbon projects, that are intended to

The other day I was sitting at home trying to write something in a hurry when the phone rang. “Hi Pilita, it’s James here,” chirped a man who turned out to be a total stranger from a public relations firm, who wanted me to talk to an executive from a company I had never heard

The EU’s decision to suspend its deficit and debt rules for an extra year is not an excuse for member states to persist with loose spending policies, Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner has said, in a call for more fiscal discipline. “The fact that member states are now able to deviate from the Stability and

Global stocks rallied at the end of a turbulent week after China unveiled fresh stimulus measures to fight a growth slowdown in the world’s biggest emerging market. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 share index rose 1.5 per cent and London’s FTSE 100 gained 1.8 per cent. In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 3 per

Boris Johnson will not be issued with further fines over his involvement in the “partygate” scandal, Downing Street confirmed on Thursday, as the Metropolitan Police announced the end of its probe into the affair. The Met said it had made 126 referrals for fixed-penalty notices in its investigation into parties in Downing Street and Whitehall

Turkey has blocked Nato’s initial decision to process requests by Finland and Sweden to join the military alliance, throwing into doubt the hopes for a quick accession of the two Nordic countries. Nato ambassadors met on Wednesday with the aim of opening accession talks on the same day that Finland and Sweden submitted their applications

Twitter said it plans to enforce the $44bn takeover agreement with Elon Musk, just hours after the Tesla boss declared the purchase “cannot move forward” unless the social media company can certify the number of fake accounts. The San Francisco-based group made the comments in a detailed filing on Tuesday, outlining the whirlwind weeks in

Andrew Bailey sought to defend the Bank of England’s control of inflation on Monday, with the governor telling MPs that criticism of the central bank relied significantly on “hindsight”. In a hearing at the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons, Bailey acknowledged that with inflation likely to have hit a 40-year high of 9

Finland is applying for Nato membership in a historic move that would more than double the defence alliance’s borders with Russia and change the geopolitics of Europe. “This is a historic day. A new era starts,” Finnish president Sauli Niinistö said at a press conference, as Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, another non-Nato member

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the G7 group of industrialised nations was urgently seeking alternative routes for the export of Ukrainian grain as Russia’s war against its western neighbour raised the risk of a global “hunger crisis”. Speaking at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Germany, Baerbock said some

Elon Musk on Friday tweeted that he had put his $44bn deal to take Twitter private “temporarily on hold” pending details supporting the calculation that spam and fake accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of users. Musk posted his remarks on the microblogging site with a report from the Reuters news agency about the

BP has committed to reinvest all its profits from its North Sea oil and gas production over the next decade back into the UK, as it sought to head off political pressure for a windfall tax to help offset energy costs for consumers. “This decade with our current plans we expect to reinvest every pound

US consumer price growth remained at a four-decade high in April, despite the first moderation in the annual pace in eight months, underscoring the urgency of the Federal Reserve’s push to stamp out inflation. The consumer price index rose at an annual pace of 8.3 per cent last month, a step down from the 8.5

The UK government’s move to delay post-Brexit checks on imports of EU food products is an “accident waiting to happen”, farming, veterinary and meat industry groups have warned. They sounded the alarm after industry insiders revealed the UK Food Standards Agency had recently warned pig farmers of illegal “white van” shipments of pork meat coming

Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to quit as leader of the UK’s Labour party if he is fined for breaking coronavirus restrictions by police who are investigating an evening meal in April last year. The opposition leader is under investigation by Durham police over allegations that restrictions were broken during a campaigning event which he

The US on Sunday targeted executives at Gazprombank for the first time in a new set of sanctions that also bans companies from providing Russia with corporate services such as accounting and consulting. “We’re sanctioning some of their top business executives, they’re the people who sit at the top of the organisation, to create a

A jubilant Sinn Féin was poised to clinch a historic victory in Northern Ireland’s elections and become the region’s biggest political force for the first time in a century, after more than half the seats to the Stormont assembly were decided. Sinn Féin, the party long associated with the paramilitary IRA, was clearly ahead of

Boris Johnson will face renewed pressure on his leadership on Friday after the Conservatives suffered significant defeats in local elections across the UK, including losing the flagship London council of Wandsworth. Labour won the borough beloved of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher for its ultra-low local tax rates after 44 years in Tory hands, but

The Bank of England has warned that the UK economy will slide into recession this year as higher energy prices push inflation above 10 per cent, a forecast that pushed sterling to a two-year low. Rising prices would cause the worst squeeze in household finances for many decades, the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee said as