BUSINESS

Councils in England are spending on average twice as much on school transport for children with special educational needs than on maintaining their road networks, a Guardian investigation has found. Many councils have said their obligations under the wider special educational needs and disabilities (Send) system are financially unsustainable, with the rapid increase in pupil … Read more

In just seven weeks since returning to the White House for a second term, Donald Trump has upended the US approach to the invasion of Ukraine and treated Russia increasingly not as an adversary, but an ally. After tossing aside decades of alignment with Europe against Russian aggression, the US president suspended military assistance and … Read more

Digital blackouts reached a record high in 2024 in Africa as more governments sought to keep millions of citizens off the internet than in any other period over the last decade. A report released by the internet rights group Access Now and #KeepItOn, a coalition of hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide, found there were … Read more

Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature Andrew Roth There was an audible gasp in the room at the Council on Foreign Relations as Keith Kellogg, the White House’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, characterised the US decision to cut off intelligence sharing and military aid to … Read more

Housing associations are facing allegations of mis-selling so-called “affordable” homes, with service charges that have soared, in some cases by more than 400%, after residents moved in. Marketing and property documents examined by the Observer reveal how buyers who may be struggling financially are enticed to buy shared ownership homes with estimated monthly service charges … Read more

As the Nobel laureate Robert Lucas quipped during the 2008 financial crisis: “I guess everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole.” Donald Trump’s upending of the postwar security consensus has underlined the enduring wisdom of Lucas’s observation. But now, instead of bank bailouts and emergency bond buying, European firepower is being directed at bombs, tanks … Read more

Mastercard and Visa are processing payments for illegal gambling websites accused of scamming UK customers out of thousands of pounds. An investigation has found that the payment giants are failing to stop their networks being used to make transactions on unlicensed sites despite a previous pledge to do so. Last week, Mastercard was offered alongside … Read more

There was an audible gasp in the room at the Council on Foreign Relations as Keith Kellogg, the White House’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, characterised the US decision to cut off intelligence sharing and military aid to Kyiv as like beating a farm animal with a piece of wood. “Very candidly, they brought … Read more

Millions of pounds of fines imposed on water firms will fund environmental schemes to protect the country’s waterways after fears the money would be diverted to the Treasury. The water restoration fund was set up by the Conservative government to ensure that polluting water firms paid for the damage they caused. The fund received £11m … Read more

The letter the US president, Donald Trump, says he sent to Iran’s leadership offering to reopen talks on the country’s nuclear programme comes at a point when Iranian domestic politics is at its most unstable for years. In the past month, the conservative-dominated parliament has asserted its power over the broadly reformist president elected last … Read more