Germany is pushing Intel to expand its plans for a landmark €17bn chip plant in exchange for higher subsidies, in what is already set to be the country’s largest foreign direct investment since the second world war. The US semiconductor group is due to receive €6.8bn in subsidies from Berlin to build its mega fab,
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Aviation’s worst nightmare is that governments searching for quick solutions to the climate crisis might be tempted to curb demand for air travel, which accounts for roughly 2.5 per cent of global CO₂ emissions. Last month, UN secretary-general António Guterres turned up the heat when he said that the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on
In the west, the job of government is to prop up wobbly banks. In China, the role of government is seemingly to destabilise lenders. US and European bank bosses, at worst, face losing their jobs. In China, they may lose their liberty too. The Chinese authorities escalated their attack on Wednesday with a probe into
Signs the US labour market is cooling have raised hopes that the worst inflation problem in decades is improving, but economists warn further action is still needed from the Federal Reserve to fully contain price pressures. Data released on Friday bolstered the view that the world’s largest economy, while still resilient, is gradually losing some
Israeli fighter jets bombed the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Friday, amid a sharp escalation of violence after militants in Lebanon and Gaza fired a volley of rockets at Israel. The Israeli military said that it had hit four targets — including two weapons manufacturing sites and two tunnels — belonging to the
Kyiv is willing to discuss the future of Crimea with Moscow if its forces reach the border of the Russian-occupied peninsula, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told the Financial Times. The comments by Andriy Sybiha, deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, are the most explicit statement of Ukraine’s interest in negotiations since it
Donald Trump has launched a blistering attack on “election interference at a scale never seen before” in the US, casting himself as a victim of political persecution after he became the first former president to face criminal charges. In a grievance-filled speech on Tuesday night from the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump
Imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has not yet received a consular visit from American officials, but official human rights monitors affiliated with the Russian government say he is reading Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman while in pretrial detention at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. In the first account of his condition in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison
Russia’s security services are confiscating the passports of senior officials and state company executives to prevent overseas travel, as paranoia over leaks and defections spreads through Vladimir Putin’s regime. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine still raging, security officers have tightened up travel requirements within the state sector, demanding the surrender of travel documents from some
Credit Suisse is bracing for a tumultuous annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, when protesters are expected to vent their anger at the implosion of one of Switzerland’s historic financial institutions. The meeting will take place at a 15,000-capacity ice hockey stadium in the Zurich suburb of Oerlikon. It will be the bank’s first in-person AGM
Donald Trump will turn himself in to New York prosecutors on Tuesday, his lawyer said, insisting the former president would “not be put in handcuffs”. Joe Tacopina added he expected the charges — the first criminal indictment in history of an ex-US president — to relate to payments to buy the silence of porn actress
Donald Trump has been indicted following a years-long investigation by Manhattan prosecutors that has led to the first criminal charges against a former US president in the country’s history, according to his lawyers. “President Trump has been indicted. He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court,” his lawyers
Elon Musk and more than 1,000 tech researchers and executives have called for a six-month “pause” on the development of advanced artificial intelligence systems such as OpenAI’s GPT to halt what they call a “dangerous” arms race. An open letter, published on Wednesday by the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit campaign group, had been
Switzerland’s private banks are seeking to poach key staff and clients from Credit Suisse as steep job and bonus cuts force bankers into the market following the takeover by UBS. Julius Baer, Pictet, Lombard Odier, EFG and LGT are among Swiss wealth managers sounding out disgruntled Credit Suisse bankers, people familiar with ongoing conversations have
China has significantly expanded its bailout lending as its Belt and Road Initiative blows up following a series of debt write-offs, scandal-ridden projects and allegations of corruption. A study published on Tuesday shows China granted $104bn worth of rescue loans to developing countries between 2019 and the end of 2021. The figure for these years
Israel’s president Isaac Herzog has implored the government to halt a bitterly contested judicial overhaul, warning that the polarisation it had caused had put “our security, economy, society” under threat. Mass protests erupted across the country overnight with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked his defence
Vladimir Putin has said Russia plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, marking Moscow’s latest attempt to use the threat of a nuclear war to ramp up tensions with the US and Nato over the invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s president said work would be completed on building storage units for tactical nuclear weapons in
Outside Zurich’s central station a statue of Alfred Escher looks proudly down Bahnhofstrasse, one of the world’s most expensive shopping streets, to Paradeplatz, the heart of the city’s financial district. Trains still trundle along the Swiss rail network that the 19th-century industrialist pioneered — but the bank he founded 167 years ago to finance its
Central bankers have been at pains to stress that they can maintain a neat dividing line between actions taken to quell inflation, and those to fix turmoil in the banking system. So much so that the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised interest rates by a quarter point, despite the recent collapse of three midsized
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday pressed ahead with its monetary tightening campaign despite the recent turmoil in the banking sector, raising its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point and signalling another increase to come. Following its latest two-day meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee voted to lift the federal funds rate