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Passengers on one of the UK’s busiest inter-city rail routes face a prolonged period of disruption after the operator of the west coast mainline sharply reduced services, blaming “severe” staff shortages. Avanti West Coast, which runs services from London to cities in the north of England and Scotland, said on Monday it would implement an
It turns out the planet might have a future after all. Following a period of acute and rising pessimism, the US Congress — and President Joe Biden — have pulled off the most significant climate change bill in American history. The fact that almost every observer, including many Democrats, had written off any chance of
Globalisation means that an accountant in New York can get a minute-by-minute update of the worst few weeks in the life of a British family. The case of Archie Battersbee, a 12-year-old boy who has now died, has gripped media outlets the world over: his death was marked by a push notification from The New
The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago Tammy, 49, her mother Mary and daughter Nikki, 11, sat polishing off a corn dog on a bench at the Ottawa County fair. They were sheltering from the late-July sun, mercifully upwind of the malodorous goat show, and around the corner from the Redneck Fries stall,
When an international dispute has been rumbling on for decades, it can seem like a chronic condition that will never become terminal. The US and China were squaring off about Taiwan in the 1950s. I wrote a cover story for The Economist on the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995. So it is tempting to see
Huge losses at SoftBank’s flagship Vision Funds will force the company to begin “dramatic” cost-cutting after plunging technology valuations and a weak yen drove Masayoshi Son’s embattled conglomerate into a record ¥3.1tn ($23bn) quarterly net loss. In a press conference that Son himself described as “depressing”, he admitted that his famously aggressive global investment strategy
Much has been written about whether Big Tech has peaked. Meta recently announced its first sales drop, amid a fall in online advertising. Amazon, Netflix and others have cut back on hiring. Plenty of platforms have seen their stock prices crushed this year, which is typical as rates go up, and their growth slow. But
Messages from the archive of Rutherford Hall, critical communications strategist From: Rutherford@monkwellstrategy.com To: JamesW@LKandW.co.uk Hi James, No, I really don’t think now is the right moment to give money to Liz Truss. In general, we advise caution on political donations, but in any case you have left it far too late. While her team will
This week offers one of Africa’s most significant votes this year as Kenyans go to the polls on Tuesday to decide a new president. The contest is between the current deputy president William Ruto, 55, and Raila Odinga, a 77-year-old veteran of such campaigns now on his fifth attempt at the top job. Relations with
The UK government’s Covid-19 venture capital fund has been mostly invested in what one director overseeing the portfolio called “zombie businesses”, leaving it with “a significant tail of dormant companies”, according to documents seen by the Financial Times. The Future Fund, a £1.1bn portfolio set up by then-chancellor Rishi Sunak and managed by the state-owned
The US Senate has passed Joe Biden’s flagship economic package after a marathon overnight voting session that handed the president a major political victory just months before the midterm elections. The climate, tax and healthcare bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by 51 votes to 50, with voting split along party lines and