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Russia is to halt the flow of gas to Poland and Bulgaria from Wednesday, according to authorities in both EU nations, as Moscow steps up its efforts to weaponise energy supplies over the invasion of Ukraine. PGNiG, the Polish state-controlled gas group, stated on Tuesday that Russian supplier Gazprom had informed it of a “complete

Twitter’s board has accepted a roughly $44bn offer to sell the company to Elon Musk, handing control of the influential social media platform to the world’s richest man. Announcing the deal, Musk said “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy” and described the social media platform as “the digital town square where matters

Emmanuel Macron is set to be re-elected for a second term as French president after defeating his far-right rival Marine Le Pen in the second round of voting on Sunday, according to projections by polling agencies based on early returns. Victory for the liberal internationalist Macron, first elected in 2017, will mean continuity in economic

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky lashed out at the Kremlin after Russian missiles killed eight civilians in the port city of Odesa, as America’s top diplomat prepared to visit Ukraine for the first time since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began eight weeks ago. In heated remarks, Zelensky called the Russians “bloody bastards”, “Nazis” and “Rashists” — a

The US urged the UK and the EU on Friday to reach a compromise on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements after Boris Johnson threatened to tear up the agreement between the two sides. The British prime minister said during a trade mission to India that his government was willing to take unilateral steps to reform

The UK government is preparing legislation that will give ministers sweeping powers to tear up the post-Brexit deal governing trade in Northern Ireland, risking a fresh confrontation with Brussels. Two people with knowledge of internal discussions said prime minister Boris Johnson and foreign secretary Liz Truss had in principle signed off on plans to put

Boris Johnson has vowed to lead the Conservatives into the next election and urged people to focus on “things that matter”, ahead of a House of Commons vote on his handling of the partygate scandal. Johnson will on Thursday table a “wrecking amendment” intended to defer for weeks a Commons vote to launch a formal

Netflix shares fell more than 20 per cent on Tuesday after it warned its decade-long run of subscriber growth had ended in the first quarter and admitted that it is becoming “harder to grow membership” in many markets. The streaming pioneer also warned that the number of subscribers would fall by another 2mn in the

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had begun a long-awaited major new offensive in the country’s eastern Donbas border region after its forces intensified attacks along the frontline. Zelensky said in a late-night TV address on Monday that Russia had concentrated a “significant part” of its forces in the region and vowed that Ukraine would

The twin perils of slowing growth and high inflation, or stagflation, will hit the global economy this year as Russia’s war against Ukraine exacerbates a slowdown in the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, according to Financial Times research. Mounting price pressures, slipping output expansion and sagging confidence will all pose a drag for most countries,

This year’s hawkish change in tack from central banks is close to ending the era of negative-yielding debt, shrinking the global tally of bonds with sub-zero yields by $11tn. Bond prices have tumbled this year as central banks move to end large-scale asset purchases and raise interest rates in their battle with soaring inflation, pushing

Twitter has launched a poison pill takeover defence to fend off a $43bn hostile bid from billionaire Tesla chief executive Elon Musk. In the first sign that the social media company plans to fight Musk’s bid, Twitter said on Friday that its board of directors had unanimously adopted a year-long shareholder rights plan to “enable

Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter with a bid that values the company at $43.4bn, a move that could turn the Tesla chief executive into a social media mogul. Musk’s offer of $54.20 a share comes days after he took a 9 per cent stake in the company, becoming its largest shareholder

US president Joe Biden is expected to announce $800mn in additional military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday, including artillery and armoured vehicles, according to a person familiar with the matter. The assistance comes as Ukraine is bracing itself for a new and more brutal Russian offensive in the south-eastern Donbas region, after successfully forcing a

UK prime minister Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak have been issued with fines as part of an investigation by the Metropolitan Police into breaches of Covid-19 rules in Downing Street and Whitehall during the pandemic. The force said on Tuesday that more than 50 fines had been issued. Downing Street

Ukraine’s finance minister has made an appeal for immediate financial support of tens of billions of dollars to plug a gaping fiscal deficit caused by the Russian invasion. Government spending exceeded revenues by about $2.7bn in March and Ukraine expects the gap to expand to $5bn-$7bn a month in April and May because of the

Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen will face each other in the second and final stage of the French presidential election on April 24 after beating the other candidates in the first round of voting on Sunday, according to early estimates. Macron won 28.6 per cent and Le Pen 24.4 per cent

Italian prime minister Mario Draghi will visit Algeria on Monday to sign a new gas supply deal, as Rome strives to reduce its dependence on Russian fuel following the invasion of Ukraine. It is the latest in a series of moves made by European countries to secure alternative fuel sources as they seek to cut

Russian missiles on Friday hit a railway station in Kramatorsk, killing dozens in the town in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region as Moscow intensified its offensive in the east of the country. “Thousands of people were at the station during the missile strike, as residents of Donetsk province are being evacuated to safer regions of Ukraine,”

The Labour party and independent experts have warned that Boris Johnson’s energy security strategy will fail to reduce the UK’s reliance on expensive imports this decade and do little to alleviate the pressure on households from soaring fuel bills. The prime minister has backed away from setting targets for some of the fastest and cheapest

The US has imposed its most severe level of sanctions on Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, and Alfa-Bank, the country’s biggest private bank, escalating its economic punishment of Moscow in response to atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. The announcement on Wednesday of “full blocking sanctions”, which prevent the lenders from transacting with any

Western powers have presented a united front on the eve of a phone call between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, when the US president is expected to detail punitive measures that would inflict “severe” damage to Russia’s economy if the country invades Ukraine. The US president hosted consultations with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy

EU and Nato allies have swung behind the Biden administration’s assessment that Russia may be poised to invade Ukraine, following unprecedented sharing of US intelligence on Moscow’s military preparations. Weeks of sustained US diplomatic engagement with European governments, backed by a sharing of intelligence normally reserved for its closest allies, have helped convince some previously

Jay Powell signalled his support for a quicker withdrawal of the Federal Reserve’s massive asset purchase programme, in comments that raised the spectre of earlier interest rate rises next year and exacerbated a stock market sell-off. Powell’s testimony at a congressional hearing roiled markets, which were already under pressure after the chief executive of Moderna

Albert Bourla has become the world’s most in-demand chief executive. As vaccines permitted some countries to reopen their economies over the summer, the Pfizer boss flew into Cornwall for the G7 summit in June, parking his private jet next to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plane. Weeks later, he was welcomed to the Olympics by then

The UK will place six southern African countries back on its red list of travel restrictions, after an apparent surge in cases of a heavily mutated coronavirus variant caused alarm among global health officials. Travellers returning from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Eswatini will be forced to quarantine for 10 days at a

President Joe Biden has announced the release of oil from the US’s strategic stockpile in a bid to drive down petrol prices and snuff out a crude market rally that the White House has said poses a threat to the global economic recovery. The White House said on Tuesday the president was authorising the release

Joe Biden has nominated Jay Powell to serve a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve, opting for continuity at a delicate moment for the US economy as it grapples with persistently high inflation and a patchy labour market recovery. Lael Brainard, considered Powell’s fiercest competitor for the top job, was tapped for the

Telecom Italia is to hold an emergency board meeting on Sunday to evaluate a takeover offer from US private equity group KKR, a deal that would be one of the largest telecoms buyouts of all time. KKR already holds a 37.5 per cent stake in Telecom Italia’s “last mile” network but has moved to make

Nancy Pelosi said the US House of Representatives would press ahead with a vote on Joe Biden’s $1.75tn Build Back Better bill on Thursday night, after an independent government agency said the package would add $367bn to the federal deficit over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office, which provides cost estimates for big legislation,