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Germany has warned that EU consumers should brace for a big economic hit and higher energy prices as Berlin said it was willing to back an embargo of Russian oil to punish Moscow for its war on Ukraine. Europe was prepared to bear the strain of cutting its use of Russian crude, said Robert Habeck,

Cash can be tight for those start-up companies that have yet to sell any products. Best, then, that managers of those groups avoid unnecessary expenses. Nikola Corporation, the clean-energy truckmaker, violated this principle last year in dramatic fashion. The Arizona-based company agreed to a $125mn settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over charges

The writer is author of ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ and professor emeritus at Harvard Business School On April 23, lawmakers in Brussels approved the Digital Services Act, a major piece of legislation aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech. The DSA is not just more procedural drudgery on the EU’s conveyor belt of

The great retail trading boom of 2021 is turning to bust. That is the view of Robinhood, the company whose commission-free trading app helped turn millions of people into first-time investors. But it is not the full story. Robinhood’s funded accounts grew by 100,000 to 22.8mn in the three months to the end of March,

The government of China does not have the legitimacy that flows from winning an election. But officials in China often claim that the Communist party benefits from something even better: “performance legitimacy”. The idea that the Chinese government easily outperforms the dysfunctional west has been pushed hard during the Covid-19 crisis. At a ceremony in

Hello from Trade Secrets. In today’s main piece, we look at how the Ukraine war, as well as finally giving the EU some geopolitical backbone (though how firm that will be in the longer run remains to be seen), has helped transatlantic co-operation on trade-related security issues. Charted Waters looks at one of the reasons

The US has held top-level talks with the UK on how the two nations can co-operate more closely to reduce the chances of war with China over Taiwan. It is the first time the countries have explored conflict contingency plans. Kurt Campbell, the White House Indo-Pacific co-ordinator, and Laura Rosenberger, the top National Security Council

The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago It’s a cliché that the US is a nation of immigrants — and a cliché that, for the past few years, has been just plain wrong. This nation of 330mn people managed to resettle a meagre 11,000 refugees in the fiscal year that ended in September

The coronavirus pandemic is creeping closer to the halls of power in Beijing as authorities rush to avoid an uncontrolled Shanghai-style Omicron outbreak in China’s capital. Beijing is tightening coronavirus restrictions after reporting 41 cases on Sunday. Officials in the city of 22mn, which is also home to the ruling Chinese Communist party’s senior leaders,

Good morning. We don’t break years into thirds, but if we did, we’d be saying “the first third was just awful for stocks”. The S&P 500 hit its all-time high on January 3 — opening day for markets — and is down 14 per cent since then. Today I take the measure of what happened:

Few western statesmen have enjoyed much quality time with Xi Jinping, especially as China’s president has of late retreated into pandemic-era seclusion. Kevin Rudd is one who did. “I spent a total of 10 hours in conversation with Xi in six separate meetings, including about three hours around a winter fire at the prime ministerial

Investment by UK employers in training has fallen by more than a quarter since 2005, and an overhaul by the government of tax incentives is needed to stop Britain “sleepwalking into stagnation in skills”, according to new research. Employer spending per employee on training has fallen 28 per cent in real terms since 2005, dropping

The writer is author of ‘How to Be a Better Leader’ and is a visiting professor at Bayes Business School, City, University of London Marks and Spencer is hiring. It needs a new ESG communications manager. The British retailer is looking for a “stellar candidate who combines substantial knowledge of issues such as plastics, human

Totally independent of China’s alleged efforts to establish a military base in the Solomon Islands, it is reprehensible that the US “has not had a permanent diplomatic presence there since 1993”, as you report (April 23). This is a disgrace to the memory of the thousands of US soldiers, sailors and marines who gave their

By Chloë Ashby You might disbelieve me, but it’s not the half-dressed workmen in Gustave Caillebotte’s 1875 painting “The Floor Scrapers” (pictured, below) that I’m interested in — I can take them or leave them —  it’s the wooden floor. It’s the decorative energy of the iron window grille. The creamy baseboard with its golden

This article is part of a guide to Singapore from FT Globetrotter Here’s a question I’m asked a lot: is there a hotel or resort in the world you love so much, a place that gets it so right, that you’ve kept it to yourself, and never written about it? The answer I’m invariably inclined to give

To suggest as Constanze Stelzenmueller does, that Germany has a “special responsibility to stop Putin’s evil” (Opinion, April 25) would be a distraction for several reasons. First, each country in Europe and the rest of the world has the responsibility to stand up against the unjustified invasion of a sovereign country; the violation of human

More than 100 people were evacuated from a steelworks in Mariupol that has become a last holdout of Ukrainian resistance to Russian forces in the besieged port city. Repeated international efforts to broker safe passage for civilians sheltering in the Azovstal plant finally bore some fruit at the weekend as the UN and Red Cross

Senior British MPs have called on parliament to strengthen its human resources practices following the latest wave of harassment and conduct allegations in Westminster. Neil Parish, a Conservative MP and chair of the environment, food and rural affairs select committee, was forced to quit parliament after admitting that he had watched pornography twice in the

In Sydney, the beauty on the Bay It’s hard to get a bad harbour view in Sydney, that world-beating harbour town; a handful of hotels in its Central Business District and The Rocks – in particular the Park Hyatt, with its forever perspective on the Opera House (and unassailable service) – deliver fine ones. If,