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European shares and US stock futures kicked off the new month on a downbeat note, struggling to reverse course after Wall Street posted its longest streak of quarterly losses since the 2008 financial crisis. The regional Stoxx Europe 600 gauge lost 1.3 per cent in early dealings on Monday, while contracts tracking the S&P 500

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro will face leftwing former leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a run-off vote at the end of this month after neither candidate gained a winning margin in a closer than expected presidential election. Lula claimed more than 48 per cent of valid ballots, failing to pass the 50 per cent

Bank of Japan board members are concerned about the risk of inflation rising faster than expected and the health of the bond market, according to minutes of last month’s policy meeting released on Monday. Japan’s core consumer prices, which exclude volatile food prices, hit 2.8 per cent in August, but the BoJ expects inflation to

Industry is back. For the last several decades, the sector has been overlooked and underinvested in, as Wall Street embraced Silicon Valley, services and all things technology-related. Manufacturing, particularly in rich countries like the US, was regarded as a “has been” business. Fewer and fewer wanted to invest or work in it. The inevitable decline

In the days before mobile internet spread across India, Byju Raveendran, an engineer and test preparation tutor from a coastal village in Kerala, could hold the attention of a stadium full of thousands of teenagers with the power of numbers. Or, at least, the magic numbers they would need to pass India’s competitive standardised engineering

China’s president Xi Jinping is poised to secure an unprecedented third term as leader at a congress of his Communist party this month, but behind the political theatre a broader shift is playing out. Demographers predict the world’s most populous country will start to shrink in 2022, a turning point with profound ramifications for its

The UK’s credit rating was threatened with a downgrade late on Friday when S&P, one of the world’s largest credit rating agencies, put the country on a “negative outlook” after chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini” Budget last week. The rating agency maintained the UK’s double A investment grade credit rating but warned the outlook was negative.

The chair of the Labour party has written to her Conservative counterpart calling on him to provide a full list of attendees at a private champagne reception attended by Kwasi Kwarteng just hours after his controversial “mini” Budget. Jake Berry, Tory chair, has defended the chancellor’s meeting with financiers at the home of a wealthy

Liz Truss has executed a humiliating U-turn by scrapping plans to axe the 45p top rate of tax, after facing a growing revolt from Tory MPs led by former cabinet ministers Michael Gove and Grant Shapps. After insisting on Sunday that the controversial plan would go ahead, Truss concluded after talks with her senior team

One of the leading contenders to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister has said he will not stand in the forthcoming leadership contest, as other Conservative MPs prepare to launch their campaigns. Defence secretary Ben Wallace was the favourite among the Tory grassroots, with a net approval rating of +86 among party members according to

Rishi Sunak, who quit as Boris Johnson’s chancellor this week, launched his bid to lead the Conservative party on Friday with a pledge that he will avoid “comforting fairy tales”. His video to launch his campaign appeared a coded attack on what many MPs have seen as the prime minister’s Panglossian approach to policy. “Someone

Boris Johnson has announced his “painful” resignation but defied pressure to step down immediately as prime minister, insisting he would remain in office until a new Conservative party leader is chosen. In an address in front of No 10 Downing Street, after days of turmoil and mass resignations from his government, he accused his party

Boris Johnson’s turbulent three-year premiership was nearing its end on Wednesday night after he was urged to quit by a delegation of his closest cabinet allies. The UK prime minister was warned that unless he stepped down there would be further cabinet resignations, followed by an inevitable humiliating defeat by Tory MPs in a no-confidence

Boris Johnson’s premiership was teetering on the brink on Tuesday night, after chancellor Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid dramatically resigned from the cabinet. Downing Street was braced for more ministers quitting with many Tory MPs believing the dual resignation of two senior ministers could signal the beginning of the end for Johnson. Sunak

Protesters brought parts of the UK’s motorway network to a standstill on Monday in a demonstration over high fuel prices. Police warned drivers that a “slow-moving rolling roadblock” was causing delays on parts of the M4 motorway near the border between England and Wales and on the M5 near Bristol. There were also “significant delays”

Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit. In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the

Hackers with suspected links to China’s intelligence agencies were still advertising for new recruits to work on cyber espionage, even after the FBI indicted the perpetrators in an effort to disrupt their activities. Hainan Tengyuan, a Chinese technology company, was actively recruiting English language translators in March according to job adverts seen by the Financial

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, the pioneer of low-cost travel in Europe, has warned fares will rise for the next five years because flying has become “too cheap” to make profits as industry costs spiral. His warning comes as ticket prices have risen in Europe and the US this summer as passengers return and some airlines

The UK’s trade performance fell to its worst level since records began in the first quarter of 2022, heaping more pressure on sterling in international currency markets. Although the Office for National Statistics warned that the figures it published were “subject to higher levels of uncertainty than normal”, the new system it used to collect

The governor of the Bank of England warned on Wednesday that Britain’s economy is suffering more from the energy crisis than other countries with UK inflation likely to stay higher for longer. Speaking with other central bankers at a European Central Bank conference in Sintra, Portugal, Andrew Bailey said the BoE needed the option of