58 h. ago IMF warns that trade tensions could test stability of world economy; Reeves ‘confident’ about US trade deal – business live

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial newsDonald Trump’s tariffs will make it harder for Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s car division, Ineos Automotive, to reach its first profit.Ineos Automotive’s CEO, Lynn Calder, told Bloomberg that the US president’s 25% tariff on foreign cars will make it harder to hit the earnings target.“For sure, this last week has put a dent in that and, for sure, delayed it,”“We’re stubborn as mules. We’re not easy to knock down.”“With fieldwork completed just days after Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, it is unsurprising that consumer expectations for the economy plummeted to a record low. The original tariff schedule, since reduced for most countries, was expected to reduce growth in the UK and elsewhere. Yet despite this economic pessimism, expectations of retail spending rose slightly as the prospect of Easter shopping drew closer.The state of the economy dropped significantly to -48 in April, down from -35 in March.Their personal financial...

Events

62 h. ago US trade war fears drive UK consumer confidence down to record low; Tesla’s European sales fall again – business live

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial newsDonald Trump’s tariffs will make it harder for Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s car division, Ineos Automotive, to reach its first profit.Ineos Automotive’s CEO, Lynn Calder, told Bloomberg that the US president’s 25% tariff on foreign cars will make it harder to hit the earnings target.“For sure, this last week has put a dent in that and, for sure, delayed it,”“We’re stubborn as mules. We’re not easy to knock down.”“With fieldwork completed just days after Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, it is unsurprising that consumer expectations for the economy plummeted to a record low. The original tariff schedule, since reduced for most countries, was expected to reduce growth in the UK and elsewhere. Yet despite this economic pessimism, expectations of retail spending rose slightly as the prospect of Easter shopping drew closer.The state of the economy dropped significantly to -48 in April, down from -35 in March.Their personal financial...

Economics

3 d. ago Bonnie Blue splashes out on lavish 'basic' purchase after 'most disgusting stunt yet'

Bonnie Blue has revealed the life of luxury she's been living in thanks to her wild content creation career - which includes her claims to have broken the world sex record

Politics

3 d. ago The global south has lost its pope. The world has lost its conscience | Nathalie Tocci

He was no liberal, but Francis embodied a spirit of international solidarity that is in alarmingly short supplyPope Francis died hours after meeting the US vice-president, JD Vance. If that wasn’t a bad enough omen, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump’s acolyte and self-styled “Christian nationalist”, appeared to welcome the pope’s death as a sign of “evil” being “defeated”.In fact, despite a series of clashes with the Trump White House, Francis was no liberal. While refraining from judging homosexuality, he explicitly disapproved of the liberalising synodal path embarked on by the Catholic church in Germany, which ruled in 2023 that church employees could not be sacked for entering same-sex relationships or remarrying after divorce. On abortion, euthanasia, women and LGBTQ+ rights, Francis betrayed the high hopes that liberals and progressives had bestowed upon him. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago Federal judge orders US to restore visas of 2 international students in Oregon

A federal judge in Oregon has ordered the U.S. government to restore the visa status of two international students whose visas had been revoked

Society

5 d. ago Emboldened by Trump, the ‘liberal’ UK is giving free rein to its colonial impulses | Kenneth Mohammed

Faced with fading empires’ petulance, the global south must draw a red line under its relationship with them and forge new ties based on mutual respectAs Donald Trump rains chaos down upon the US – dismantling the rule of law trading in rage-fuelled nationalism and bullying the rest of the world – his ideology is now being eagerly imitated not just by the expected rogues of global politics, but by supposed bastions of democracy.These democracies now wear only a mask of civility over that old colonial impulses: control, divide, exploit. Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago With ‘AI slop’ distorting our reality, the world is sleepwalking into disaster | Nesrine Malik

A perverse information ecosystem is being mined by big tech for profit, fooling the unwary and sending algorithms crazyThere are two parallel image channels that dominate our daily visual consumption. In one, there are real pictures and footage of the world as it is: politics, sport, news and entertainment. In the other is AI slop, low-quality content with minimal human input. Some of it is banal and pointless – cartoonish images of celebrities, fantasy landscapes, anthropomorphised animals. And some is a sort of pornified display of women just simply being, like a virtual girlfriend you cannot truly interact with. The range and scale of the content is staggering, and infiltrates everything from social media timelines to messages circulated on WhatsApp. The result is not just a blurring of reality, but a distortion of it.A new genre of AI slop is rightwing political fantasy. There are entire YouTube videos of made-up scenarios in which Trump officials prevail against liberal forces....

Events

8 d. ago Judge blocks Trump administration’s from passport changes affecting transgender Americans

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of “X” marker used by many nonbinary people on passports as well as the changing of gender markers

Politics

8 d. ago Lawsuit challenges revocation of visas for international students

A class action lawsuit filed Friday asks a federal court to reinstate the legal status of international students who have been stripped of their visas in a Trump administration crackdown that has left more than a thousand fearful of deportation

Society

8 d. ago Show goes on for Ralph Lauren as fashion reels from Trump tariffs

With the sector bracing itself for a global trade war, investors may find comfort in a trusted pair of handsTwo weeks after Donald Trump announced his “liberation day” tariffs, the fashion industry finds itself in turmoil as it tries to navigate the chaos unleashed.Some are calling it the “tariffpocalypse”, with the sector bracing itself for a global trade war, snarling up supplies and hiking costs, alongside plummeting consumer confidence. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Colombian national ‘broke ICE agent’s nose’ during attempted arrest in New Jersey

The Justice Department claimed the ICE agent received a concussion and has been “fainting” and suffering from “shortness of breath” since having her nose broken

Events

9 d. ago AP PHOTOS: Trump's tariffs could be tough to crack for a German nutcracker maker focused on the US

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs threaten to become a tough nut to crack in an unlikely place — a small Germany company producing painstakingly hand-crafted nutcrackers that are snapped up by American collectors.

Politics

9 d. ago ‘Who is going to face Mr Trump’: Canada leaders’ debate dominated by US crisis

Mark Carney’s Liberals have surged in the polls since Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada, scuppering Conservative calls for change after Trudeau eraPrime Minister Mark Carney said the key question in Canada’s upcoming election is who is best to deal with Donald Trump as he faced his Conservative rival in a French-language leaders’ debate on Wednesday.Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said during the debate Canada needs change after a decade of Liberal party rule and Carney is just like his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. Carney responded: “Mr Poilievre is not Justin Trudeau. I’m not Justin Trudeau either. In this election the question is who is going to face Mr Trump.” Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Trump's tariffs could be tough to crack for a German nutcracker maker focused on the US

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs threaten to become a tough nut to crack in an unlikely place — a small company whose factory nestled deep in the hills of eastern Germany produces painstakingly hand-crafted nutcrackers that are snapped up by American collectors

Politics

1 week ago Judge in Colorado puts temporary hold on removals sought by Trump under 18th century wartime law

A federal judge has put a temporary hold on deportations of immigrants in Colorado who face possible removal under President Donald Trump's invocation of an 18th century law known as the Alien Enemies Act

Events

1 week ago Liberal staffers plant ‘stop the steal’ pins at Canadian conservative conference

Operatives placed buttons at CSFN trying to link Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre with Donald TrumpCampaigners with Canada’s Liberal party had some very American-esque politicking over the weekend, when Liberal operatives were found to have planted “stop the steal” buttons at a conservative conference to link the Conservative party to Donald Trump.Two Liberal party staffers infiltrated last week’s Canada Strong and Free Network Conference (CSFN) in Ottawa at which they strategically placed provocative buttons designed to create the false impression that Conservative supporters of party leader Pierre Poilievre were embracing Trump-style rhetoric, highlighting internal party divisions. Continue reading...

Economics

1 week ago Horrified girlfriend watches MotoGP champion suffer brutal 125mph crash which has left him hospitalised with injuries 'even worse than expected'

MotoGP world champion Jorge Martin is recovering in hospital with 11 broken ribs and a collapsed lung after a crash described by the man who smashed into him as 'the worst scene of my life'.

Events

1 week ago BP dropped its green pledges and turned back to oil. Now the price of crude has collapsed

At its AGM this week, the company will face not only the activist investor at its heels, but a global economy being changed from the White HouseAfter Donald Trump’s “liberation day” on Wednesday last week, BP lost almost a quarter of its market value in a share price rout even deeper than the oil giant endured in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The collapse in global oil prices in the wake of the US president’s ­tariff blitz may have wiped billions from its ­market value – but Trump isn’t BP’s only problem.The oil company will face shareholders this week for the first time since it bowed to investor pressure to abandon its green energy ambitions in favour of a return to fossil fuels, and its chair, Helge Lund, agreed to step down from the board. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Price hike on Shein? How Trump tariffs could shift the US’s love of fast fashion

Trump ended the ‘de-minimis’ rule while launching a trade war with China – which will make retail giants such as Temu more expensive, experts sayAfter a chaotic week of flip-flopping tariff policies, cheap clothes from China are nearly certain to face a steep price hike soon – prompting concern among fast fashion retailers and potentially pushing consumers to look for other alternatives.As part of a package of global tariff policies announced on “liberation day” last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order that ended a duty-free exemption for low-priced goods to enter the US from China and Hong Kong. Known as the “de-minimis” rule, packages under $800 do not qualify for any taxes or tariffs on the goods and are inspected minimally at the border. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago America's missing nuclear weapons as 'Broken Arrow' incidents expose atomic

The USA reportedly still possesses over 5,000 nuclear warheads - which is enough to destroy most life on Earth - but the military is responsible for at least 32 accidents involving weapons

Events