The US has moved to punish Belarus for the forced landing of a Ryanair flight last weekend by announcing that it would reimpose sanctions on nine of the country’s state-owned companies and would join the EU in developing a list of additional targets. In a statement late on Friday, Jen Psaki, the White House press
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The market for special purpose acquisition companies has become an unexpected casualty of the Archegos Capital Management scandal, as banks rein in lending to hedge funds that had invested heavily in blank-cheque companies. Banks across Wall Street have become more wary of how much leverage they can extend to their clients following the collapse of
Tesla is set to take the unusual step of paying in advance for chips to secure its supply of the crucial materials and is also exploring buying a plant as part of efforts to overcome the global shortage, according to people familiar with the matter. The US electric-car maker is discussing the proposals to secure
The Biden administration has renewed US calls for a fuller investigation into the origins of Covid-19, after a report last weekend bolstered the theory that the disease was released accidentally from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Andy Slavitt, one of the US president’s coronavirus advisers, on Tuesday said the investigation carried out
EU leaders are weighing a range of sanctions to punish Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarusian regime after what Brussels branded the “hijacking” of a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania to arrest a dissident on board. Options to be explored by the bloc’s 27 leaders at a meeting today include banning Belarus’s national carrier, Belavia, from landing
European leaders have called for an immediate international response after Belarus forced a Ryanair flight bound for Lithuania to land in Minsk on Sunday and arrested one of its passengers, a top opposition activist. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus’s exiled opposition leader, said online activist Roman Protasevich, resident in Lithuania, had been detained in the Belarusian capital.
Two doses of either the BioNTech/Pfizer or Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines offer good protection against symptomatic infection from the variant first identified in India, according to new UK data, indicating minimal reduction in efficacy compared to the so-called Kent variant. The BioNTech/Pfizer jab provided 88 per cent protection against the B. 1.617.2 variant found in India,
The chief executive of AstraZeneca has insisted its Covid-19 vaccine has a future, as he revealed the UK had priority access to the jab and hit out at the “armchair generals” behind “traumatic” attacks on the company. In his first interview following a string of setbacks, including the emergence of rare fatal side-effects, Pascal Soriot
Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, have agreed to a ceasefire that would end an 11-day conflict that has killed at least 230 Palestinians and 12 Israelis. The truce came a day after the US stepped up pressure on Israel to end its bombardment of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, with US president Joe Biden
US companies have urged President Moon Jae-in of South Korea to release Samsung’s chairman Lee Jae-yong, arguing that the billionaire executive could boost Joe Biden’s efforts to shake off American dependence on computer chips produced in foreign countries. Samsung is weighing multibillion-dollar investments in new semiconductor facilities in the US, with the Seoul-based group considering
An investment firm founded by the son of China’s most powerful financial official has invested heavily in technology companies, including units of leading Chinese internet groups Tencent and JD.com. Liu Tianran, son of vice-premier Liu He, was listed as chair of Tianyi Ziteng Asset Management, also known as Skycus Capital, when the firm was established
Energy groups must stop all new oil and gas exploration projects from this year if global warming is to be kept in check, the International Energy Agency said. The proposal is one radical scenario outlined in a report on ways to achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, the level required to keep temperatures
The US economy added 916,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate edged down to 6 per cent in a sign that the recovery was accelerating in the month that Joe Biden signed his $1.9tn stimulus into law. The non-farm payrolls data released on Friday exceeded economists’ expectations and marked a sharp improvement from the
Global dealmaking activity had its strongest start to the year in four decades, fuelled by a flurry of US acquisitions and Spac mergers, even as the global economy reels from the impact of lockdowns and coronavirus restrictions. Deals worth $1.3tn were agreed in the three months to March 30, more than any first quarter since
Joe Biden is proposing to plough $2tn in government spending into US infrastructure alongside $2tn in higher corporate taxes, in the first stage of a multitrillion-dollar effort to reshape the world’s largest economy. The White House released details of the plan ahead of a speech by the US president in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, with administration
The biggest counterparties of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital last week discussed ways to limit the market fallout from his collapsing bets on stocks including ViacomCBS, according to four people briefed on the talks, but the effort foundered and paved the way for days of chaotic trading. Before the troubles at the family office burst into
Archegos Capital, a private investment firm, was behind billions of dollars worth of share sales that captivated Wall Street on Friday — a fire sale that has left traders scrambling to calculate how much more it has to offload, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The fund, which had large exposures to ViacomCBS
Wall Street traders are hunting for the source of a distressed stock selling spree that caused a sharp slide in several Chinese technology companies and US media groups on Friday. The mysterious share sales, worth almost $19bn, sparked rumours that a hedge fund or family office had blown up and was moving to wind down
European governments have warned that their hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases as leaders struggle to get a grip on the pandemic after a week of ill-conceived lockdown measures and recriminations over the EU’s slow vaccine rollout. German health authorities on Friday warned that the third wave of coronavirus infections could
US president Joe Biden declared “hope is on the way” as he doubled his goal for coronavirus vaccinations to 200m within his first 100 days in office and trumpeted his $1.9tn fiscal stimulus deal for already delivering a stronger recovery. Biden’s optimism in the fight against the coronavirus and the economic downturn came on Thursday