A deal to end Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian seaports and grain exports remains distant because Moscow is using talks to push its war aims and ambition to dominate the Black Sea, Kyiv’s top negotiator said. Turkey and the UN are trying to broker an end to Russia’s naval blockade in the Black Sea, which has

Australia’s coal dependent electricity grid will lose 60 per cent of its coal plants over the next eight years, requiring urgent investment in renewables and batteries, the country’s energy market operator has warned. The Australian Energy Market Operator also said A$12.8bn ($8.8bn) must be urgently spent on new transmission lines to accommodate a rapid increase

The companies that own the UK’s local electricity distribution networks are facing big cuts to their profits after the energy regulator told them to invest more in maintenance and improvements on Wednesday. Ofgem has published plans to cut baseline annual rates of return to 4.75 per cent for the five years from April 2023, down

CME Group plans to launch binary options in a push to woo more retail traders, offering a type of contract that regulators in much of Europe have banned as a form of gambling. The Chicago-based derivatives exchange operator on Tuesday said its so-called event contracts would be offered in September, allowing “individuals to trade their

Jupiter Fund Management chief executive Andrew Formica is retiring after only three years in the role, following a lacklustre period marked by fund outflows and a falling share price. The London-listed fund group, which manages £55bn, said on Tuesday that Formica will step down in October and will be replaced by the asset manager’s new

The writer is an obstetrician/gynaecologist in Wisconsin Roe vs Wade was overturned last Friday. Those of us who provide abortion care, in my case for the women of Wisconsin, had been bracing themselves for it for a while, especially after the Scotus leak in May. But the actual ruling was still a brutal punch in

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has launched an investigation into Kristo Käärmann, the co-founder and chief executive of payments app Wise, over deliberately defaulting on tax payments. The investigation comes after HM Revenue & Customs included Käärmann, a billionaire, on a list of individuals who had received a penalty over the matter, in a document

Janan Ganesh puts his finger unerringly on a key failing of liberal democracy, but then fails to complete the diagnosis (“Anarchy is a likelier future for the west than tyranny”, Opinion, June 22). For 250 years, since the Enlightenment, the holy grail has been increasing individual empowerment and choice, and development of an economic system

Midas, a 46-year-old construction company based in south-west England, collapsed in January blaming soaring material and labour costs, and a decision by clients to scrap key contracts. The buckling of the privately owned building group, which directly employed 300 staff and had turnover of £290mn last year, rippled through the seaside town of Torquay, delaying

São Paulo’s Paulista Avenue was once the beating heart of the Brazilian economy. Stretching three kilometres across the city centre, the yawning boulevard was home to the nation’s biggest banks. Today Paulista is the public face of Brazil’s sharp economic decline. Homeless encampments dominate pavements and robberies are common. The prestige associated with the one-time

The hustle, said US writer Fran Lebowitz, is not a new dance step, but an old business procedure. Undoubtedly so. The question, as London, Hong Kong and Tokyo near the halfway point of 2022, is which beleaguered global financial centre has taken this analysis most closely to heart. London, certainly, is looking hungry. Last week,

How richly ironic that Edward Luce’s splendidly insightful column, “Democrats will pay price for turning deaf ear to ordinary voters” (Opinion, June 17) appeared the day before the guest at Lunch With the FT (Life & Arts, June 18/19) was Hillary Clinton, whose dreadful campaign in 2016 stoked the fires of alienation of those “ordinary

The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music and Cultureby Andrew Mellor, Yale University Press £18.99/$30 The Nordic lands have become a musical powerhouse, from Grieg and Sibelius to Björk and Eurovision winners. Over a decade or more a passion for all things northern has taken Mellor on an exploration of Nordic culture, its folklore and

Strange animals roam the City of London  Sculpture In The City, London This annual exhibition uses the urban landscape of the Square Mile as a rotating, evolving gallery space, running from Liverpool Street’s Bishopsgate to Fenchurch Street Station Plaza. For its 11th edition, work from 19 artists will be spotlighted. Kicking off proceedings is Jocelyn

Germany’s government fears Russia could take advantage of annual maintenance on its main export pipeline to shut off gas supplies to the country completely, increasing the risk of a winter energy crisis in Europe’s largest economy. Earlier this month Russia cut the flow of gas through Nord Stream 1 by 60 per cent. The pipeline,

Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. US stocks stay fairly flat after Fed Chair Jerome Powell testifies in Congress, a Ukrainian-made drone hits an oil refinery in Russia, and the International Energy Agency says investing $25 billion annually could lead to universal