business 
Ministers from Keir Starmer downwards have sometimes seemed perplexed about what they see as the fuss made over their acceptance of hospitality in the last nine months. From their point of view, free tickets to concerts and sporting events are a paltry form of compensation for the disruption to their private lives that comes from … Read more
As JD Vance touched down in Greenland, the Trump administration received an unlikely endorsement for America’s first potential territorial expansion since 1947: Vladimir Putin. Speaking at an Arctic policy forum in the northern Russian city of Murmansk on Thursday, Putin presented a more comprehensive case than any US official yet for Donald Trump’s plan to … Read more
Vladimir Putin has suggested Ukraine could be placed under a temporary UN-led government to organise fresh elections as both Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of breaching an energy ceasefire agreed this week. The idea was quickly rejected by a US spokesperson, and it was not clear how far it was meant to be taken … Read more
The University of Michigan has shuttered its flagship diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) program and closed its corresponding office, becoming the latest university to capitulate to Trump’s anti-DEI demands. The school launched the program in 2016, at the beginning of Trump’s first administration, and it became a model for other DEI initiatives across the country. … Read more
Ministers and senior officials at every level of government are holding talks with US counterparts this weekend in a last-ditch effort to secure a carve-out from swingeing import taxes. Government sources said ministers were raising Donald Trump’s looming tariffs as the “No 1” issue in every conversation with the US. Trump announced on Wednesday that … Read more
The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to intervene to allow the government to continue to deport immigrants using the obscure Alien Enemies Act. The request came one day after a federal appeals court upheld a Washington DC federal judge’s temporary block on immigrant expulsions via the wartime act, which allows the … Read more
The life-preserving cancer drugs that Dame Esther Rantzen was placed on last year are no longer working, her daughter has said. The health of the terminally ill Childline founder and journalist has deteriorated to the extent that she is no longer well enough to travel to a Swiss clinic, meaning that Dignitas is “out of … Read more
Political leaders in Greenland have agreed to form a broad four-party coalition government, in a show of national unity before US vice-president JD Vance arrives on the island for an unsolicited and controversial visit. In a rebuke to the Trump administration and its public campaign to gain control of Greenland, four of the territory’s five … Read more
The head of the government’s controversial counter-terrorism programme Prevent is leaving his position after a damning inquiry revealed the strategy’s failures in relation to the Southport attack. Michael Stewart had spearheaded the programme – which aims to to stop people from becoming involved in or supporting terrorism – since September 2020. He was in charge … Read more
Thames Water’s chief financial officer has quit his £1.3m-a-year job, the cash-strapped water company has announced. Alastair Cochran, who had also recently served as interim chief executive at Thames, will leave his role within days. His departure comes at a critical time for the UK’s largest water company amid close scrutiny of its fragile finances. … Read more