Latest US financial, market & economic news and analysis.
Vegetable and grain growers call for urgent action, warning of ‘catastrophic’ harvests due to continent-wide drought Successive intense heatwaves and an increasingly severe, continent-wide drought have left many of Europe’s farmers in an “unprecedented” crisis, with vegetable and grain growers in particular warning of “catastrophic” harvests. French vegetable production is down by “a very…
Energy prices have been high since the US-Israel war with Iran began and the strait of Hormuz was blocked US gas prices this month are so far the highest ever recorded for August as peace talks between the US and Iran have stalled and Donald Trump launched fresh threats against Oman. The national average price of gas was $4.06 per gallon on Monday, according to data from AAA , $0.05 higher than…
Industrial output and retail sales slump in July after one of the country’s weakest quarterly growth rates ever China’s economy is showing signs of extending a slowdown with a slump in industrial output and retail sales in July, adding to pressure on Beijing to intervene with measures to support activity. After the world’s second largest economy posted one of its lowest quarterly growth readings…
Exclusive: Raúl Torrez is drafting two bills with state lawmakers to bolster consumer protections and child safety online, building on state’s landmark case against Meta New Mexico ’s attorney general is mounting a full-court press against technology companies to improve their child safety measures, capitalizing on a landmark win in court against Meta earlier this year. Raúl Torrez is working with…
Guardian investigation finds apparent discrepancy between what tech company has said about its AI capacity – and the number of advanced chips it has in operation The chips are quite small and some can be held in the palm of a hand. They are fundamental to the development of artificial intelligence models – and the world’s biggest technology companies need vast numbers of them to keep ahead.…
China has established the first scheduled transit through the northern sea route, but questions remain over the environmental and political risks When Marco Rubio suggested that the world should look to new shipping lanes to bypass the logjammed strait of Hormuz, it’s unlikely he had the Arctic’s northern sea route in mind. And yet in recent months the promise of this 5,500km channel – cleaved…
Exclusive: Fake consultancy impersonating Brisbane firm online is one of 13 websites seized by the US Department of Justice Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast When the first emails arrived, they were easily dismissed as spam. But as strangers continued to boast about their defence and security credentials, they became…
London police force tells Telegraph incident was result of ‘human error’ and it is conducting an investigation The Metropolitan police have apologised for accidentally exposing the email addresses of more than 140 victims of Mohamed Al Fayed. In a group update about its investigation into the former Harrods owner, the force copied the email addresses of 143 victims of Fayed in a message that…
US tax policy deprives the government of revenue and overwhelmingly serves the interests of the rich After the House passed its version of Donald Trump ’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) last year – the one that paired a $5tn-plus tax cut with $1tn-plus of cuts from food stamps and Medicaid – the House speaker, Mike Johnson , explained that “this is not giving tax cuts to the millionaires”. The…
Network wants to serve Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr after president sues over January 6 documentary The BBC is trying to subpoena Donald Trump’s children as it builds its defense against the president’s defamation lawsuit centered on a documentary on the January 6 insurrection. In a motion filed on Friday, the BBC sought authorization to serve Trump’s two eldest children, Donald…
Exclusive: Companies that kept policies did just as well financially, even after Trump’s executive order, as those that didn’t Conservative backlash was supposed to put an end to the diversity, inclusion and equity ( DEI ) movement as companies were warned “go woke, go broke”. In January 2025, Donald Trump delivered a death knell, ending DEI within the federal government with executive orders and…
Tech billionaire’s $158.3bn deal an outlier in report showing widening gap of CEO to worker pay at top companies Elon Musk received over 2.5m times as much compensation at Tesla as the company’s average worker, according to a new report on the growing gap between top corporate executives and their workers. Musk’s $158.3bn pay deal was an outlier but came as the gap between CEO and worker pay…
Critic of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau leadership was put under investigation and suspended from job The Trump administration has been accused of “bullying and intimidation” after a labor union leader and critic was put under investigation and suspended from his job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Stephen Wheeler, a data scientist at the agency since 2022 and chair of…
US envoy had claimed Americans could be extracting crude by as early as next year Greenland authorities have forced a US oil company connected to Donald Trump to postpone drilling wells in the Arctic territory, defying claims by the US president’s envoy that Americans could be extracting crude by next year. Amid Trump’s imperialist threats, tensions have been rising on Greenland’s eastern coast…
A cheap currency helps finance the US tech boom. Washington is intervening because allies matter only when they are useful Japan’s yen has slid back towards 160 to the dollar, despite last month’s extraordinary US-Japanese intervention. Traders are betting that its role as a cheap funding pipeline for global finance will continue. Earlier this month the Trump administration stepped in to help…
Fair Work Commission issues a new minimum standards order for gig workers to come into effect 17 August Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Delivery drivers in Australia will be paid a minimum rate of $31.30 (US $22.05/£16.35) an hour and insured for injuries on the job under a landmark agreement approved by the industrial umpire that could set a precedent in other…
A layoff and a leap of faith convinced Katie Teixeira she had what it takes to run her own business In 2010, Katie Teixeira adopted a kitten found all alone in an abandoned house. The kitten – so tiny she fit in the palm of Teixeira’s hand – needed to be bottle-fed every few hours. For weeks, Teixeira set her alarm for middle-of-the-night feedings and drove home on her lunch break to care for the…
A citizen referendum, only the second of its kind in Georgia history, seeks to block a zoning amendment Ire Gene Grovner stood behind his house on a recent morning, between chicken pens on one side and rows of winter collard greens on the other, holding a knife and skinning a raccoon splayed across a wood post. “The meat is good roasted,” Grovner said. He pointed to the collards, a burst of green…
When partners consider finances, when is it ‘my’ money, and when it is ‘our’ money? Guardian readers shared their experiences Private lives: ‘I want to end my marriage but I’m financially dependent ’ A survey of about 1,000 Americans found that one in 10 would describe their partner as a financial bully. Our readers, however, insist that that might be a label easily assigned to a partner who is…
