79 m. ago Bad news for Trump $2,000 checks as Senators balk at price tag and adding to national debt

President has touted massive financial giveaway as the state of economy and affordability issues damage his approval rating

Economics

2 h. ago The Guardian view on falling net migration: political debate is now detached from the facts

A fixation on reducing numbers leaves no room for rational discussion of what that means for the economy and societyBritish political debate has long been dominated by public anxiety about rising levels of immigration. How might that change if the population tide were to turn? Not at all, would appear to be the answer. Net migration has in fact been falling since before Labour came to power last July, and yet there has been no end of demand for ever tighter controls and no end of government acquiescence.New figures published this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), adjusting historical data for methodological changes, show that net migration was 944,000 for the year ending March 2023 – about 40,000 higher than had previously been thought. The drop since then has also been steeper. The number for the year ending December 2024 is now thought to be 345,000 – lower than the earlier count by 86,000.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would li...

Politics

4 h. ago Budget 2025: Is Rachel Reeves planning to raise income tax next week?

Rachel Reeves will announce the full extent of her plans for the economy at the Autumn Budget

Economics

6 h. ago Death toll from Russian attack rises to 25 as Ukraine says it will raise issue at UN – Europe live

Ukraine to raise the overnight attack on Ternopil, in which more than 70 people were injured, at the security council tomorrowThe Dutch economy minister said he had moved to take effective control of Nexperia to ensure Europe was not locked out of chip production “in an emergency”.He said the decision to lift the legal move to prevent Nexperia from moving intellectual property and physical assets from its European factory in Hamburg and its corporate headquarters in Nijmegen was the “right step” after consultation with the European Commission and others.“The Netherlands has considered it the right moment to take a constructive step by suspending the order under the Goods Availability Act, in close consultation with European and international partners. The Netherlands will continue to engage in constructive dialogue with the Chinese authorities in the period ahead.” Continue reading...

Events

6 h. ago New Breathing Space Bench unveiled outside Craigneuk Lifelong Learning Centre

Officially revealed by provost Kenneth Duffy as part of a week of mental health and wellbeing activities at the centre, held in the run-up to World Kindness Day.

Politics

7 h. ago ‘Pictures unite!’: how pop music fell in love with socialist infographics

When Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath invented the visual language of Isotypes, it was to democratise education. As a new exhibition shows, it ended up influencing pop art, graphic design and electronic musicians from Kraftwerk to OMDWhen Otto Neurath died in Oxford some 80 years ago, far away from his native Vienna, he was still finding his feet in exile. Like many a Jewish refugee, the economist, philosopher and sociologist had been interned as a suspected enemy alien on the Isle of Man, along with his third wife and close collaborator Marie Reidemeister, having chanced a last-minute life-saving escape from their interim hideout in the Netherlands across the Channel in a rickety boat in 1940.Thanks to Neurath’s pioneering use of pictorial statistics – or “Isotypes” as Reidemeister called them, an acronym for “International System of Typographic Picture Education” – he left behind an enormous legacy in the arts and social sciences: it is the language through which we decode and an...

Politics

7 h. ago Poland detains several people in connection with rail sabotage as foreign minister condemns Russian ‘state terrorism’ – Europe live

Radosław Sikorski says Poland will respond to the weekend’s incidents ‘not only diplomatically’, and will withdraw consent for last Russian consulate in the countryThe Dutch economy minister said he had moved to take effective control of Nexperia to ensure Europe was not locked out of chip production “in an emergency”.He said the decision to lift the legal move to prevent Nexperia from moving intellectual property and physical assets from its European factory in Hamburg and its corporate headquarters in Nijmegen was the “right step” after consultation with the European Commission and others.“The Netherlands has considered it the right moment to take a constructive step by suspending the order under the Goods Availability Act, in close consultation with European and international partners. The Netherlands will continue to engage in constructive dialogue with the Chinese authorities in the period ahead.” Continue reading...

Politics

7 h. ago An existential battle of interests: what the Sudanese war is actually about

A bitter race to claim economic and political power has divided the country and the human cost can no longer be ignored• Don’t get The Long Wave delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereAlmost everywhere I go, I am asked about Sudan. The questions are partly from concern for family and my birth country, and partly from a genuine desire to understand how the conflict there has turned into something so intense and seemingly unstoppable. This week, I break down what is happening in the country, and why it has escalated to catastrophic proportions.*** Continue reading...

Events

11 h. ago FTSE 100 Live 19 November: Inflation dip fuels rate cut bets, WH Smith boss quits

Inflation fell to 3.6% last month as official figures today provided a pre-Budget boost for Rachel Reeves.

Economics

12 h. ago FTSE 100 Live 19 November: Inflation rate dips, WH Smith boss steps down

Inflation fell to 3.6% last month as official figures today provided a pre-Budget boost for Rachel Reeves.

Economics

12 h. ago The historic SS United States will continue to break records at the bottom of the ocean

The move is set to create a tourism economy for Okaloosa County

Politics

13 h. ago Sisu: Road to Revenge review – Finnish hero takes on a Red Army butcher in terrific sequel

Punchy, old-school stunt work, inventive baddie-splattering and a simple plot as our grizzled Finish prospector finds a new foe in his Soviet-occupied homelandIn 2022, the Finnish indie action movie Sisu had the look of a one-hit wonder. Pitting a grizzled prospector against an entire platoon of Nazis, writer-director Jalmari Helander heeded the lessons of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, principally that there is serious cinematic value in going pedal-to-the-metal along a single, straight narrative line. That profitable sleeper hit now yields this choice follow-up, which somehow feels more expansive while still clocking in under 90 minutes.Having seen off the SS, indomitable hero Aatami (Jorma Tommila) gains a tragic backstory and a new, vicious postwar foe in the tremendously named Red Army butcher Igor Draganov, played by wily James Cameron favourite Stephen Lang. Again, the economy of Helander’s approach proves striking and thrilling. No unnecessary obstacles have been placed...

Events

15 h. ago Launch of East West Rail services to be delayed in row over guards on trains

Trains between Oxford and Milton Keynes put back to 2026 partly due to dispute, Chiltern Railways saysThe start of passenger services on the new East West Rail line will be delayed until at least 2026 with no start date confirmed, the operator has said, partly due to a row over guards on the trains.Passenger trains were supposed to come into service between Oxford and Milton Keynes this autumn, the first stage on the new railway along the Oxford-Cambridge arc where the government hopes for rapid economic growth. Continue reading...

Politics

15 h. ago ‘I thought the grownups were back in charge!’: John Crace on how Labour shattered his expectations

After 14 years of Tory rule, the Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer thought he had seen it all. Westminster would surely tick along nicely once Keir Starmer’s party took over. How wrong he was ...I feel I should probably start with an apology. A few days after the 2024 general election, I wrote that it felt as if the grownups were back in charge. It wasn’t as if I was carried away by the vision of Keir Starmer or the charisma of Rachel Reeves. More that I felt we had regained a basic level of competence. That politics would become business as usual rather than the breathless psychodrama of the past 10 years. You could go to bed at night relatively confident that the country would be more or less recognisable when you woke up. There would be no more mad people doing mad things as we raced through five or six news cycles in the course of a couple of hours.And part of me was a little concerned. Because what is good for economic stability and social justice isn’t necessarily good fo...

Politics

19 h. ago Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv seeks $44bn from Russia for climate

The move marks the first time a country is claiming damages for such an increase in emissions. What we know on day 1,365See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverageUkraine plans to seek nearly $44bn from Russia for the damage linked to an increase in climate-warming emissions from the ongoing war, a government minister told Reuters. The move marks the first time a country is claiming damages for such an increase in emissions, including from the fossil fuels, cement and steel used in fighting the war, and from the destruction of trees through resultant fires. “A lot of damage was caused to water, to land, to forests,” said Pavlo Kartashov, the country’s deputy minister for economy, environment, and agriculture. “We have huge amounts of additional CO2 emissions and greenhouse gases,” Kartashov said in an interview on the sidelines of the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil.Russian drones struck an apartment building in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, triggering a fire, injuring five peo...

Events

21 h. ago Senate agrees to automatically pass bill to release Epstein files as Trump claims to not care – US politics live

President says ‘I don’t care when the Senate passes the House Bill’ after it agrees to unanimous consent request to pass act as soon as legislation arrives from HouseHouse passes bill to release Epstein files with near-unanimous supportHow did your representative vote on releasing the Epstein files?The Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he would be stepping back from public life after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between Summers and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wing man”.Politico reported on Monday that Summers, a former treasury secretary, expressed deep regret for past messages with Epstein. Continue reading...

Politics

24 h. ago More than 80 countries at Cop30 join call for roadmap to fossil fuel phase

Countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Pacific and Europe plead for transition to be central outcome of talksCop30 live – latest updatesMore than 80 countries have joined a call for a roadmap to phasing out fossil fuels, in a dramatic intervention into stuck negotiations at the UN Cop30 climate summit.Countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific joined with EU member states and the UK to make an impassioned plea for the “transition away from fossil fuels” to be a central outcome of the talks, despite stiff opposition from petrostates and some other major economies. Continue reading...

Politics

24 h. ago House votes overwhelmingly to release Epstein files after Trump and Republican allies drop resistance – US politics live

Near-unanimous vote passes on bill to force release of all files related to investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey EpsteinThe Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he would be stepping back from public life after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between Summers and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wing man”.Politico reported on Monday that Summers, a former treasury secretary, expressed deep regret for past messages with Epstein. Continue reading...

Politics

25 h. ago The Guardian view on crypto’s latest crash: it reveals who pays the price for a failing economy | Editorial

The bitcoin collapse lifts the lid on a society without opportunity, where risk is privatised and rightwingers sell illusions of freedom while ordinary punters bear lossesThe crypto crash has come again. And it is as brutal as ever. In barely six weeks, more than $1.2tn has evaporated from cryptocurrencies’ market capitalisation. The sell-off has sent bitcoin back to levels last seen in April. The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly fell below $90,000 this week, shedding almost a third of its value since its October peak.The key to understanding crypto is that it has no “value” in any economic sense. It generates no income, commands no productive capacity and pays no dividends. Unlike state money, it is not backed by a tax base or a fiscal authority. What props up its price is not cashflow but expectation: the hope that someone else will validate today’s valuation tomorrow. When sentiment turns sour or people pull their money out, there is nothing to break cryptocurrencies’ fall....

Events

26 h. ago House begins debate on release of Epstein files; Mike Johnson says he’ll back release – US politics live

Move comes after Donald Trump dropped his opposition to a vote on releasing files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey EpsteinFull report: House set to vote on release of Epstein documentsExplainer: What to know about the US House voteExplainer: What are the Epstein files?The Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he would be stepping back from public life after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between Summers and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wing man”.Politico reported on Monday that Summers, a former treasury secretary, expressed deep regret for past messages with Epstein. Continue reading...

Politics