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The UK government is collaborating with Boston-based Moderna to build the country’s first manufacturing centre for messenger RNA vaccines in a deal worth £1bn as it seeks a lead in responding to the current and future pandemics. The government is aiming to secure homegrown supplies of a technology that has proved a crucial weapon in

Strikes will spread across the UK unless the government acts on its promise to create a high wage economy, the leader of the country’s main movement for organised labour has warned. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said that workers all over the country were supporting striking rail employees and would in

President Emmanuel Macron was on course to lose his majority in France’s National Assembly on Sunday night, after a strong showing in legislative elections by a left-green opposition alliance and a late surge from the extreme right. Initial results and projections by polling agencies after voting stations closed showed that Macron’s centrist Ensemble (Together) alliance

Bitcoin’s price has broken below the key threshold of $20,000 for the first time since November 2020, risking triggering a fresh wave of selling and deepening the crisis gripping the digital asset sector. The largest cryptocurrency, which acts as a benchmark for the broader crypto market, plunged to under $19,000 on Saturday morning, a fall

Shares in Asia followed Wall Street lower after the UK and Switzerland raised interest rates, adding to concerns that tighter monetary policies from central banks could undercut a global economic recovery. Japan’s benchmark Topix index and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 both shed 2 per cent, while South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.7 per cent. China’s CSI 300

Stock markets and eurozone bond prices dropped on Thursday after Switzerland delivered an unexpected interest rate rise, following a sharp boost to borrowing costs by the US Federal Reserve. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 share index, which rallied on Wednesday after the European Central Bank promised a new mechanism to support weaker eurozone nations from rising

The Federal Reserve is set to embrace an increasingly aggressive approach to monetary policy tightening as it confronts the highest inflation in four decades. During its two-day policy meeting, officials on the Federal Open Market Committee have been actively debating the merits of implementing the first 0.75 percentage point increase since 1994. An adjustment of

UK government plans to go ahead with its first flight deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday night were grounded by a series of last-minute interventions by the European Court of Human Rights and court of appeal in London. Government sources confirmed on Tuesday evening that there would now be no one on the flight,

Brussels is to launch legal action against the UK as early as Monday, on the publication of draft legislation to rip up large parts of the 2020 Brexit deal, EU officials say, as the two sides edge closer to a possible trade war. The officials said the European Commission would respond immediately to a British

Boris Johnson has been accused by Tory MPs of “damaging the UK and everything the Conservatives stand for” as he prepares to publish a bill to rip up his 2020 Brexit deal with the EU covering trade with Northern Ireland. The legislation, to be published on Monday, will bring Johnson into conflict with many of

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin accused China of stepping up coercive behaviour towards Taiwan as he stressed that Washington would maintain its military capacity to resist any force that threatened the country. Speaking at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue defence forum in Singapore, Austin said China was engaging in provocative behaviour across the Indo-Pacific region that

Ministers are planning to reject the main recommendations from a major review of England’s food strategy as Boris Johnson seeks to regain the support of rightwing MPs and avoid hitting households with new expenses in the cost of living crisis. The review, led by Henry Dimbleby, founder of the Leon restaurant chain, was commissioned in

Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt. Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises

Hundreds of millions of people are at risk of “hunger and destitution” because of food shortages due to the Ukraine war, the chief of the UN warned, as talks stalled over ending Russia’s blockade of Black Sea grain shipments. António Guterres spoke as negotiators from Russia and Turkey failed to break an impasse over how

The chief executive of London’s Heathrow airport, the UK’s largest, has warned it will take up to 18 months for the aviation industry to rehire staff and return operations to pre-pandemic levels, following a gruelling period of disruption and cancellations. John Holland-Kaye said airlines and airports needed to “plan much better” to avoid further cancellations

Boris Johnson on Monday night survived a bruising no-confidence vote, but his victory by 211 to 148 in a ballot of Tory MPs left him badly damaged and exposed the scale of the division and animosity in his party. The result means that more than 40 per cent of Johnson’s MPs wanted to oust the

Boris Johnson’s key allies are preparing to defend him in a challenge to his leadership, as they conceded it was increasingly likely that rebel Conservative MPs had reached the key threshold needed to trigger a vote of no confidence in the UK prime minister this week. For such a vote to take place, Sir Graham

US corporate bonds sold by low-rated companies have slumped in price, signalling lenders’ intensifying worries that scorching inflation and higher interest rates are beginning to hit borrowers most vulnerable to an economic downturn. Bonds assigned a triple C rating or below, the lowest rung on the ratings ladder, have posted a negative return of 2.8

Lawyers filed a multimillion pound claim on Friday against administrators of the collapsed fund of Neil Woodford, the fallen star of British stock picking, in an attempt to recoup heavy losses of hundreds of thousands of savers. It marks the third anniversary of the suspension of the Woodford Equity Income Fund, which managed £3.7bn when

Opec and its allies on Thursday agreed to accelerate oil production in July and August, as the cartel’s linchpin Saudi Arabia bowed to US pressure to cool a crude price rally that has threatened to stall the global economy. The cartel said it would increase output by almost 650,000 barrels a day in both months,