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Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Middle Eastern politics & society myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have seized an Israeli-owned container ship in the latest escalation of hostilities between the Islamic republic and Israel. The capture of the ship comes as Tehran has been

Iran has signalled to allies and western nations that it will retaliate against a suspected Israeli air strike on its Damascus consulate in a “calibrated” manner to keep an all-out regional conflict at bay, according to officials briefed on the talks. Tehran is unlikely to target Israeli diplomatic facilities in the region, said an official

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner is being investigated by Greater Manchester police over allegations that she potentially broke electoral law by failing to properly disclose her main residence in official documents. Rayner was reported to

Iran’s supreme leader vowed “tough revenge” in 2020 against those responsible for assassinating Qassem Soleimani, the Islamic republic’s most revered military commander. Within days, Tehran launched a huge ballistic missile strike against a US base in Iraq in retaliation. But Iran also reportedly communicated its intentions in advance, helping to ensure that no American soldiers

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The writer is an external member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee As an American living in London, people regularly tell me England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. John Paulson, the Republican megadonor considered to be a potential Treasury secretary if Donald Trump wins the presidential election, has warned that the US must not “decouple” from China, striking a more measured tone than

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US inflation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Traders slashed bets on imminent Federal Reserve rate cuts on Wednesday after data showed US inflation rose to 3.5 per cent in March, surpassing expectations and marking the second increase in a row. The annual

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. The capability of new artificial intelligence models will surpass human intelligence by the end of next year, so long as the supply of electricity and hardware can satisfy the demands of the increasingly powerful technology,

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The evidence is strong, if not quite conclusive, that smartphones damage children and girls in particular. Governments should enact at least some of the legal curbs proposed in Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. But take

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had set a date for an assault on Rafah, after far-right allies warned that his premiership would not be tenable if he did not launch an attack on the town in

Simon Kuznets, the Nobel laureate known for his work on standardising the measurement of gross national product, used to group economies into four broad categories: under-developed, developed, Argentina and Japan. From the 1960s, Japan’s extraordinary growth appeared so unique to Kuznets that it warranted its own category. But, starting in the late 1990s, Japan became

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. President Joe Biden will warn China about its increasingly aggressive activity in the South China Sea this week during summits with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Two senior US

The accounting firm picked to audit Donald Trump’s social media venture has had repeated run-ins with regulators and faced criticism for its failure to live up to professional standards in the US and Canada, according to a review of public filings. BF Borgers has become one of the most prolific auditors of US public companies

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Two Chinese state-owned banks hold a crucial role in the future of Thames Water, as part of a group of lenders involved in a stand-off over debt at the parent company of Britain’s largest water

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Israel’s military said on Friday that its soldiers had made errors and violated its operating procedures in their strike on a humanitarian convoy this week that killed seven aid workers. The deaths of the workers

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Joe Biden has warned Benjamin Netanyahu that US support for Israel’s war in Gaza depended on its efforts to address the humanitarian suffering in the enclave, as he called for an “immediate ceasefire” in the

Janet Yellen said she would “not rule out” raising trade barriers to protect US green tech businesses from Chinese competition.  The US Treasury Secretary is headed to Guangzhou and Beijing to meet top Chinese economic officials later this week, and plans to use the trip to call out officials over the glut of cheap Chinese

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Google is working on the biggest shake-up of its search business by charging for new “premium” features powered by generative artificial intelligence, the first time it would put any of its core product behind a

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Ukraine has carried out its longest-range drone strikes in Russia more than two years into Moscow’s full-scale war, injuring at least a dozen people in an attack on an industrial facility and a refinery

The S&P 500 retreated from a record high to start the second quarter of 2024 on the back foot, with Treasury yields rising as resilient economic data prompting traders to reassess their bets on rate cuts this year. Despite opening in positive territory on Monday, Wall Street’s benchmark swung to close 0.2 per cent lower