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The UK economy contracted in the second quarter, with households cutting spending as the cost of living crisis began to bite and health sector output falling as Covid cases and testing declined. Gross domestic product, the measure of the quantity of goods and services produced, fell 0.1 per cent in the second quarter of the

With the fall of Kabul on August 15 2021 and the Taliban’s reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, women across the country had to find ways to cope with their lives being turned upside down swiftly and unexpectedly.  A group of women writers aged 22 to 60, from different provinces and ethnic groups, found

Boris Johnson briefly chaired a crisis meeting with energy companies on Thursday as a riposte to claims that he is leading a “zombie government”, but all big decisions have been put on hold until a new UK prime minister is in place. Civil servants may be working behind the scenes on policy options for the

The government long insisted it was not going to introduce a windfall tax on soaring energy company profits. It has now done one and repeatedly threatened another. All while various ministers mutter that they do not believe in the entire endeavour. Electricity generators came under government pressure this week to show plans to boost investment

Johnson & Johnson said it will discontinue production of its talc-based baby powder in 2023 as it battles almost 40,000 legal claims that the product caused users to fall ill with cancer. The US drugmaker said on Thursday that it decided to transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder, which it has already launched in

US attorney-general Merrick Garland said the justice department had moved to unseal the search warrant and the list of items retrieved by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday, breaking days of silence on the extraordinary operation. In a statement from the headquarters of the Department of Justice in Washington on Thursday, Garland

Liz Truss, the Tory leadership frontrunner, is a strong communicator, gutsy and could prove to be an economic “nightmare” for Labour, according to some of the opposition party’s leading strategists. Allies of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer have also been impressed by the way the foreign secretary has grown into the contest to succeed outgoing

Since Covid-19 took its first English life in March 2020, the country has recorded around 120,000 more deaths than would have been expected over the same months of three typical, non-pandemic years. This is a huge number but one that, for the first year of the pandemic, was relatively straightforward to explain. A novel and

Maybe Rupert Murdoch and AT&T knew what they were doing all along. In recent years both have curtailed their Hollywood ambitions. The pair sold entertainment assets to buyers keen to do battle in the content streaming wars. So far this year, Fox and AT&T shares have held up versus declining market indices. Other media titans

European electricity prices have soared to new records as the prolonged heatwave disrupted power markets that were already under strain from Russia’s cuts to the continent’s gas supplies. German baseload power for delivery next year, the benchmark European price, was up more than 5 per cent on Thursday at a record €455 per megawatt hour.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has sent a strong warning to the UK’s next prime minister not to interfere politically in the regulation of the City of London, saying it would hit the country’s competitiveness. The two Tory leadership contenders, foreign secretary Liz Truss and former chancellor Rishi Sunak, want to allow ministers to

Consumers have soured on stuff. For nearly two years, the pandemic supercharged online purchases of everything from home office equipment and furniture to cooking gear and gardening tools. The surging demand for goods exacerbated supply chain woes and sent prices skyrocketing, even as lockdowns strangled spending on travel and entertainment. But now western economies are

Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he backed the idea of a new gas pipeline linking Portugal and Spain to central Europe via France, saying it would vastly improve Europe’s energy security. Speaking on Thursday at his first summer press conference, Scholz said he had discussed the idea with the leaders of Spain, Portugal and France

Soaring oil use for power generation in Europe and the Middle East will boost crude consumption for the rest of the year, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday, as it increased its global demand forecast despite signs of a wider economic slowdown. Paris-based IEA, which is primarily funded by OECD members, said record European

The writer is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Russian diplomat The Russian Embassy in the UK sparked outrage and fierce criticism recently when it tweeted that prisoners of war from Ukraine’s Azov battalion, who had defended the city of Mariupol right up until the bitter end, deserved

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

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

Asian shares rallied and European stocks ticked higher after data showed that inflation in the US had steadied, boosting investors’ hopes that the Federal Reserve will soften its approach to tackling rising prices. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 gained 0.4 per cent at the open, while the FTSE 100 slipped 0.2 per cent and Germany’s

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

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