6 h. ago Five charts that explain the global economic outlook for 2026

Inflation is predicted to cool but uncertainty over AI-driven growth and trade policy poses risks in the year aheadThe global economy proved to be more resilient in 2025 than had been feared, despite severe headwinds that ranged from Donald Trump’s trade war to geopolitical tensions and the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.Entering the new year, the hope is that the worst of the recent inflation shock has passed, as the world’s most powerful central banks lower interest rates. However, the pre-Covid age of rock-bottom borrowing costs is a distant memory, global growth is slowing and conditions remain fragile. Continue reading...

Economics

35 h. ago Influx of cheap Chinese imports could drive down UK inflation, economists say

As Trump’s tariffs take effect, Britain is likely alternative destination for cars, telecoms and sound equipmentBusiness live – latest updatesThe UK is poised for an influx of cheap Chinese imports that could bring down inflation amid the fallout from Donald Trump’s global trade war, leading economists have said.After figures showed China’s trade surplus surpassed $1tn (£750bn) despite Washington’s tariff policies hitting exports to the US, the Bank of England said the UK was among the nations emerging as alternative destinations for the goods. Continue reading...

Economics

3 d. ago Blind mystic Baba Vanga makes six horrifying 2026 predictions

Blind Bulgarian mystic Baba Vanga, dubbed the 'Nostradamus of the Balkans', has made chilling predictions for 2026 including global conflict, alien contact and economic collapse

Politics

7 d. ago Elon Musk, AI and the antichrist: the biggest tech stories of 2025

A look back at the biggest tech stories of the year, from the rise and fall of Musk’s Doge to lucrative investments into AIHello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, wishing you a happy and healthy end of the year. I myself have a cold.Today, we are looking back at the biggest stories in tech of 2025 – Elon Musk’s political rise, burst, and fall; artificial intelligence’s subsumption of the global economy, all other technology, and even the Earth’s topography; Australia’s remarkable social media ban; the tech industry’s new Trumpian politics; and, as a treat, a glimpse of the apocalypse offered by one of Silicon Valley’s savviest and strangest billionaires.How an obscure US government office has become a target of Elon MuskHow Elon Musk’s billionaire Doge lieutenant took over the US’s biggest MDMA company | Technology | The GuardianThe chaos Elon Musk and Doge are leaving behind in WashingtonEggings, swastikas and dog poop: Tesla bears brunt of people’s ire ag...

Politics

7 d. ago When the AI bubble bursts, humans will finally have their chance to take back control | Rafael Behr

The US economy is pumped up on tech-bro vanity. The inevitable correction must prompt a global conversation about intelligent machines, regulation and riskIf AI did not change your life in 2025, next year it will. That is one of few forecasts that can be made with confidence in unpredictable times. This is not an invitation to believe the hype about what the technology can do today, or may one day achieve. The hype doesn’t need your credence. It is puffed up enough on Silicon Valley finance to distort the global economy and fuel geopolitical rivalries, shaping your world regardless of whether the most fanciful claims about AI capability are ever realised.ChatGPT was launched just over three years ago and became the fastest-growing consumer app in history. Now it has about 800m weekly users. Its parent company, OpenAI, is valued at about $500bn. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, has negotiated an intricate and, to some eyes, suspiciously opaque network of deals with other players in the sector...

Politics

2 w. ago Irish economy at risk from ‘global shocks’, ESRI report warns

The think tank also said the presence of multinational corporations ‘remains a tremendous positive for the Irish economy’.

Events

2 w. ago Britain slipping down global league table for youth employment, says report

PwC warns that future of a generation is at risk and that jobs crisis is costing UK economy up to £26bn a yearBritain is slipping down the global league table for youth employment amid a dramatic rise in worklessness that is putting a generation’s future at risk, research has warned.Sounding the alarm over a worsening youth jobs crisis, the report from the accountancy firm PwC said Britain’s economy was missing out on £26bn a year because of sharp regional divisions in youth joblessness. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Tui sees earnings take off, but outlook more modest for 2026

Europe’s biggest tour operator reported full-year underlying earnings up 12.6% on a constant currency basis to 1.46 billion euro (£1.27 billion).

Politics

2 w. ago ‘The patriarchy runs deep’: women still getting a raw deal in the workplace as equality remains a dream

Women work longer and per hour earn a third of what men are paid, in figures that have changed little in 35 years, UN report shows“Gender inequality is one of the most entrenched and significant problems of our time,” says Jocelyn Chu, a programme director at UN Women, responding to the stark figures contained in this year’s World Inequality report, which labels gender inequality a “defining and persistent feature of the global economy”.Women work longer and earn just a third – 32% – of what men get per hour, when paid and unpaid labour, such as domestic work, are taken into account. Even when unpaid domestic labour is not included, women only earn 61% of what men make, according to the report. Continue reading...

Economics

3 w. ago ‘Food and fossil fuel production causing $5bn of environmental damage an hour’

UN GEO report says ending this harm key to global transformation required ‘before collapse becomes inevitable’The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5bn (£3.8bn) of environmental damage per hour, according to a major UN report.Ending this harm was a key part of the global transformation of governance, economics and finance required “before collapse becomes inevitable”, the experts said. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Canada’s environmental ‘realism’ looks more like surrender | Tzeporah Berman

At a time when the UK and other countries are finally taking bold steps for climate, Canada is preparing a new oil pipelineLast week, the United Kingdom did something all too rare: it chose leadership by backing science and prioritizing public safety. The Labour government announced it would ban new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, strengthen a windfall tax and accelerate phasing out of fossil-fuel subsidies.These are not symbolic gestures. They are an acknowledgment that the global energy system is shifting and that mature economies must shift with it.Tzeporah Berman is a Canadian environmental activist, campaigner and writer Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Researchers slightly lower study's estimate of drop in global income due to climate change

Researchers who examined climate change’s potential effect on the global economy say data errors led them to slightly overstate an expected drop in income over the next 25 years

Politics

4 w. ago Despite US trade war, EOCD expects global economy will grow 3.2% this year

The world economy has proven surprisingly durable in the face of President Donald Trump’s trade wars, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Tuesday, upgrading its outlook for global and U.S. economic growth this year

Events

last month The Guardian view on the inequality emergency: why a Nobel prize winner’s warning must be heeded | Editorial

Rising economic division is destabilising nations and eroding accountability. Joseph Stiglitz’s G20 blueprint offers a way toward global economic renewalWhen Swiss tycoons handed Donald Trump a gold bar and a Rolex watch – gifts that were followed by a cut in US tariffs – it was no diplomatic nicety. It was a reminder of how concentrated wealth seems to buy access and bend policy. It may, alarmingly, become the norm if the global “inequality emergency” continues. That’s the message of the most recent work by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. The economist sees the yawning gap between rich and poor as a human-made crisis which is destroying politics, society and the planet. He’s not wrong.The problem is no longer confined to a few fragile states. It is a global harm, with 90% of the world’s population living under the World Bank’s definition of “high income inequality”. The US sits just below that threshold and is the most unequal country in the G7, followed by the UK. Prof Stiglit...

Events