How bad was your week? Well fear not. Rajesh Vishwas is here to make you feel better. The Indian government official was recently suspended after he ordered a reservoir to be drained so he could retrieve his mobile phone, which had fallen in when he tried to take a selfie while picnicking with friends. Taking
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A train crash in eastern India has killed more than 200 people, officials said, in one of the country’s deadliest railway accidents in decades. At least 233 people were killed and 900 injured in a collision involving multiple trains in the state of Odisha on Friday night, according to the state’s chief secretary Pradeep Jena.
The six Glazer siblings could retain stakes in Manchester United in a proposed phased takeover of the football club by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is seeking a way through the share structure and family dynamics that have complicated the deal. The Glazer family started a strategic review more than six months ago but the process
The train from London to Amsterdam is a 3hr 52m joke at the expense of the nation state. Four countries zip past without so much as a courtesy announcement over the speaker at each crossing of a border. Staff of indeterminate citizenship offer drinks in three languages. The onscreen message (“Welcome à bord d’Eurostar”) is a
In the circle of a therapy session in an 18th century Scottish country house are half-a-dozen recovering addicts. Many recall, at their lowest points, battling chronic depression and contemplating suicide. The patients, all male, share harrowing stories of dealing with a newfangled addiction: compulsive crypto trading. Some say their crypto addiction combined with an alcohol
And relax. After months of performative wrangling, the showboats of US politics have finally agreed to give the country more leeway in borrowing, a move that extinguishes the risk of a potentially cataclysmic default on its government bonds. Averting a disaster in the world’s core so-called risk-free asset, this is victory for common sense. If
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman spent almost two decades as a relatively low-profile member of Saudi Arabia’s Opec delegation. But since becoming the first royal to serve as the kingdom’s oil minister in 2019, he has made a name for himself, though not one of his choosing: traders have recently taken to calling him the “prickly
The writer is associate professor in cardiometabolic health at the University of Exeter and chairs the BMA Board of Science Smoking kills. In a world where physicians cannot achieve consensus on other major health threats, this unambiguous fact is something that we can all agree on. Tobacco use is the biggest cause of preventable disease
Once upon a time the world was flat, as Thomas Friedman put it, and CEOs didn’t need to check their phones at dinner. Now, it’s one crisis rolling in after another: all bets are off when it comes to supply chains and trade routes, auditors plead “material uncertainty” over accounts, and boards note the dates
Rishi Sunak has been warned by a leading think-tank against entering a “subsidy race” with the US and EU in an attempt to defend the British car industry. The UK is locked in a subsidy battle with Spain, as the prime minister tries to persuade Indian conglomerate Tata to build a new gigafactory in Britain
UK ministers have offered junior and mid-ranking civil servants a one-off payment of £1,500 in a push to end a long-running dispute over pay and jobs. In a letter seen by the Financial Times, Simon Case, cabinet secretary and the UK’s most senior mandarin, told civil service colleagues on Friday that the lump sum was
European stocks rallied on Friday after investors took heart from US congressional passage of a deal to lift the country’s debt ceiling and suggestions from Federal Reserve officials that the central bank would halt interest rate rises. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 rose 0.5 per cent, extending gains from the previous day, while France’s Cac 40
Almost a year on from England’s victory in Euro 2022, women’s football is preparing for its next big showcase event: the Uefa Women’s Champions League final. On Saturday, FC Barcelona Femení and VfL Wolfsburg will battle it out in Eindhoven in front of a sellout crowd of almost 35,000 fans. The match between the Catalan
CIA director Bill Burns travelled to China last month, a clandestine visit by one of President Joe Biden’s most trusted officials that signals how concerned the White House had become about deteriorating relations between Beijing and Washington. Five people familiar with the situation said Burns, a former top diplomat who is frequently entrusted with delicate
US jobs growth was almost twice as strong as forecast in May, an unexpected sign of labour market resilience ahead of a Federal Reserve decision on whether to hold interest rates steady or push ahead with another increase. The economy added 339,000 new non-farm jobs last month, according to figures published by the Bureau of
In just two days this week, Elon Musk had more top-level Chinese meetings than Biden administration officials have had in months. The Tesla and Twitter boss secured meetings with three government ministers as well as influential Shanghai Communist party chief Chen Jining. He reportedly even met vice-premier Ding Xuexiang, a confidant of President Xi Jinping.
OK readers. We’ve been together for six months now and if any of you still have your money in an active fund — you know, where you actually let portfolio managers choose things all on their own — I haven’t done my job. There is no excuse for it. Actually, there’s one. If your manager
Emmanuel Macron deployed a novel tactic this week to try to repair France’s frayed relations with Europe’s eastern flank — call it “strategic humility”. In a speech at a security conference in Bratislava, the French president all but apologised for not heeding warnings issued from Warsaw to Tallinn about the risks posed by Vladimir Putin’s
The late Erast Yakovenko, a barrel-chested veteran of the 1990s war in Chechnya, hailed from a long line of Russian military men. So it was no surprise to his family when he signed up to fight in Ukraine — even at 53. What was more unusual than his age — and his demise on the
As the Berlin-based music group BMG was bargaining over the terms of the sale of its record label to Sony 15 years ago, executives at the New York-headquartered entertainment giant could not understand why their German counterparts wanted to hang on to the likes of Rick Astley. Like a string of “legacy artists” that BMG
The US Senate has approved a fiscal deal between the White House and congressional Republicans, ending a weeks-long political stand-off over the debt ceiling that risked triggering an unprecedented default in the world’s largest economy. Lawmakers in the upper chamber passed the bill with overwhelming bipartisan support on Thursday evening, with 63 senators backing the