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Dinner parties in the Indian capital tend to start late and end late, sometimes stretching into the wee hours. In the posher households, the seemingly endless rounds of snacks are typically washed down with generous measures of premium booze. But Delhi, one of India’s megacities (population more than 18mn) is running short of places to

For a man who had been held up at gunpoint the previous evening, Mmusi Maimane was on surprisingly good form, when I met him in Cape Town this month. Maimane, one of South Africa’s leading opposition politicians, was in a suburban restaurant when armed men entered, forced all the diners to lie on the floor

Hong Kong’s accounting watchdog has launched an investigation into Evergrande Property Services, a major subsidiary of the embattled Chinese property developer, and its auditor PwC over a $2bn loan scheme that led to an executive clear-out last month. The investigation will put more scrutiny on Evergrande, the world’s most indebted real estate developer, after it

China has cut a crucial lending rate in an effort to shore up growth as the world’s second-biggest economy is buffeted by repeated lockdowns and a worsening property downturn. The People’s Bank of China on Monday reduced the medium-term lending rate, through which it provides one-year loans to the banking system, by 10 basis points

Liz Truss, the Tory leadership favourite, has ruled out splitting up the UK Treasury if she becomes prime minister next month, but she will turn Number 10 into an “economic nerve centre” calling the shots on economic policy. Truss believes that many of Boris Johnson’s problems as prime minister arose because he did not have

Richard Rogers’ buildings are known for their inside-out architecture. The Inmos microprocessor factory in Newport, south Wales, completed in 1982, is no exception. Like the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyd’s headquarters in the City of London, the factory’s services run on the building’s exterior through multicoloured pipework, freeing the chipmaking “clean rooms” of

The writer is chair of Rockefeller International Today, India marks its 75th birthday, no richer relative to the rest of the world than it was at independence, but very much on the upswing. India started out as the world’s sixth-largest economy, fell to 12th by 1990, and has since staged a comeback — to sixth place. Its

A decade or so on from the financial crisis, the singular sense of purpose that drove a frenzy of regulatory interventions has faded. Banks and insurers are so much safer now that regulators seem nonplussed about their resilience even as countries including the US and the UK flirt with recession, and the fallout from Russia’s

Mohammad Daud had not visited his relatives for around five years. The 32-year-old in the southeastern Afghan city of Jalalabad avoided the long trip to their rural district, fearing he might be harassed, kidnapped or killed by thieves or the Taliban along the way. In recent months, however, he has visited repeatedly, going to meet

Brexit has exacerbated the UK’s labour shortages over the past year, with industries most reliant on freedom of movement hit hard, according to a report led by academics from Oxford university. The research found that in parts of the economy such as hospitality and corporate support services there had been large declines in the number

Afghanistan has two anniversaries coming up. Friday is Independence Day, commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919, in which Britain granted Afghanistan self-determination over its foreign affairs. However, most will be more concerned with Monday, which marks a year since the Taliban regained control. This week also begins with the 75th anniversary

The Conservative leadership candidates came under growing pressure on Sunday to detail plans to tackle soaring energy bills, with increasing calls to find a way to freeze the amount households pay. Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour party, and some of the UK’s largest energy providers have put forward separate plans to cap

US lawmakers demanded more information on the potential threat to national security posed by Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents, as the fallout from the unprecedented search at the home of the former president reverberated through Washington. The comments by Democrats and Republicans on Sunday were among the first reactions from Congress to the release

Kingdom Holding, one of Saudi Arabia’s highest-profile investors, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Russian energy firms shortly before and after the invasion of Ukraine this year, the group disclosed in a filing on Sunday. Majority owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Kingdom made the investments even as western leaders sought to increase pressure

The EU has demanded that Serbia and Kosovo abandon talk of war as the bloc and Nato prepare to hold crisis talks with the rivals this week in a bid to avert fresh conflict in the Balkans. Tension between the neighbouring states, which often threatens the stability of the Balkans, spilled over into violent protests

There has been some suggestion that the US judicial system should rein back its investigations of Donald Trump, or drop them altogether. American social peace, they argue, is more precious than the blind pursuit of justice. If the price of stability is forbearance, so be it. Thankfully, Merrick Garland, the US attorney-general, took an oath

Donald Trump has mocked, dismissed and railed against the FBI and US Department of Justice for the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate this week. But the warrant that was presented to the former president’s attorneys to justify the swoop on his Florida home to retrieve boxes of classified documents he had retained since leaving the

The writer is executive director of American Compass At first glance, Republican opposition to the Chips and Science Act, through which Congress approved more than $70bn in support for the American semiconductor industry and roughly $200bn for scientific research, appears a straightforward story — of course the GOP resisted “big government” and “picking winners and

Ali Carnegie, a business energy broker based in south-west England, spends most of his working day on the phone breaking bad news to clients. In normal times, Carnegie wrangles with gas and electricity providers over single-digit percentage increases in the bills of the more than 250 small to medium-sized enterprises he has on his books.

Saudi Aramco broke its quarterly profit record set in May, as soaring energy prices driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine deliver windfalls to refiners. Net income at the state-backed group rose to $48.4bn in the second quarter, a 90 per cent year-on-year increase and its greatest earnings since listing in 2019. The Saudi oil company

Investors heartened by this summer’s recovery in US equity markets should not relax their guard so soon because corporate debt concerns will probably spark another downturn at the end of this year, one of the world’s pre-eminent volatility specialists has predicted. While sharply falling equity prices in the first half of the year reflected concerns