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Regarding your Big Read article “Urban transit on the line” (May 23), the market pressures for adaptive reuses of city centre real estate, far more than the extent of new public investments in the extension of transit infrastructure, will drive the future direction of metro ridership statistics. City centres serve an array of social functions,

Randall Peterson’s comments on Boeing (Letters, May 23) brought to mind a wartime catastrophe I witnessed. As schoolboys, we would watch fascinated as Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers assembled in formation in the skies above south Lincolnshire before setting off on their mission to Germany. On one occasion, we were startled to see the sudden

Stellantis and Samsung will build a $2.5bn battery plant in Indiana, as the parent group of Chrysler and Fiat accelerates its electric vehicles shift in the US after lagging behind its peers. The facility is set to open in 2025 and would be Samsung’s first battery manufacturing site in the US. The investment follows recent

This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: Welcome to your office in the metaverse Lynn WuThe concept of a metaverse is really about extending our physical world into virtual reality world in a 3D format. [MUSIC PLAYING] So basically, we don’t have the typical physical boundaries that we have today, like

Joe Biden made an emotional plea for the US to “stand up to the gun lobby” and “turn pain into action” after 19 children and two adults were killed in a shooting at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday. The US president’s call, delivered shortly after he returned to the White House from a trip

It’s encouraging to hear that the UK Federation of Small Businesses chair has taken the issue of late payments to Number 10 (Report, May 23). I know this is a problem that the FSB has been campaigning on for some time now. However, I wish to address the comments around bank lending and the suggestion

A simple way of understanding differentiation of function in a healthy organisation is to say that management is responsible for what doesn’t happen, while staff should take the credit for what does. In this way oversight is distinguished from the operational doing through which the purpose of an organisation is delivered. When the idea of

China’s elite universities have sealed their campuses and encouraged students to return home after the implementation of harsh restrictions to quash Covid-19 outbreaks sparked discontent and protests. Students at the country’s top two universities, Tsinghua and Peking, have been prevented from leaving their campuses for weeks as the schools enforce their own Covid bubbles. Parcels

It is always tempting to apply windfall taxes to successful energy companies, especially when they tell shareholders they are a veritable “cash machine”. But who deserves to share in these windfall profits (Report, May 18)? There has been concern in recent years that Google and other global digital giants should be taxed on the basis

Why is the EU threatening the UK over Brexit (“Trade impasse threatens UK place in €95bn science programme”, Report, May 20)? The Horizon programme’s main aim is to tackle climate change and achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals. Funding from the programme is not dependent on the Northern Ireland protocol. The protocol is a separate

Inequality is on the rise again in the UK, with pay growing fastest for the highest earners, while inflation hits those on low incomes hardest. Figures published last week by the Office for National Statistics showed average earnings in finance were 25 per cent higher in cash terms in March than the pre-coronavirus pandemic level,

The UK will on Wednesday introduce legislation to accelerate the genetic engineering of crops in England — to the delight of plant scientists and dismay of some environmental campaigners and organic farming bodies. “Outside the EU we are free to follow the science,” said George Eustice, environment secretary. “Precision technologies allow us to speed up

In examining the likelihood of a global economic recession, Chris Giles (“Is the world heading for recession?” Big Read, May 21) might have drawn attention to how the recent extraordinary evaporation of financial market wealth is bound to negatively impact global consumer demand. Since the start of the year, the simultaneous slump in the equity,

Shares in some of Britain’s biggest power companies fell sharply on Tuesday as Rishi Sunak drew up plans for a windfall tax on the energy sector to help offset spiralling domestic fuel bills. The chancellor is rushing to complete an emergency energy package to offer relief to households struggling with a spiralling cost of living

Glencore will plead guilty to multiple counts of bribery and market manipulation and pay penalties of up to $1.5bn following US, UK and Brazilian investigations that uncovered corruption at one of the world’s largest commodity traders. The UK Serious Fraud Office on Tuesday charged the group’s subsidiary Glencore Energy UK with seven cases of profit-driven

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been re-elected as director-general of the World Health Organization, setting him up for another five years in the top job at the global health body. Tedros was elected to a second term in a secret ballot on Tuesday, after running unopposed. In a break from tradition, his country of origin, Ethiopia,

Global stock markets dropped on Tuesday as downbeat surveys on business confidence and weak earnings from social media group Snap intensified concerns about the global growth outlook. On Wall Street, the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite share index dropped 2.3 per cent, while the S&P 500 — which bounced almost 2 per cent higher on Monday following

A pro-Russian former president of Moldova has been detained as part of an investigation into treason and corruption amid worries about threats to the country from the war in neighbouring Ukraine. Igor Dodon, who governed the country from 2016 to 2020, is being investigated over allegations he accepted illicit funding, Moldova’s acting anti-corruption prosecutor Elena

Qatar has pledged to invest £10bn in the UK, including in the technology, healthcare, infrastructure and clean energy sectors, as the British government steps up efforts to woo sovereign wealth fund investment from oil-rich Gulf states. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, the Gulf state’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times that the funds would be

Typical household energy bills are set to rise to about £2,800 a year in October, the energy regulator warned on Tuesday, as the scale of the cost of living crisis facing Britain was laid bare. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has been putting the finishing touches to a mini-Budget worth billions of pounds to help households