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The UN has called it the world’s first climate-change-induced famine. Madagascar’s government agrees it is a result of the west’s carbon-fuelled lifestyle. A number of scientists and experts disagree, saying it is actually a consequence of poverty and poor governance. For the people of southern Madagascar, unaware of the international furore, it is known simply

The pound is shrugging off the chance of an overhaul to the UK’s economic policy as Tory leadership hopefuls outline starkly different plans for public spending and borrowing. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary and frontrunner in the contest to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister, has outlined tax cuts costing more than £30bn, suggested that

As Britain sweltered through the country’s hottest day on record last month, supermarket delivery vans wove around the streets as usual delivering shopping to people’s homes. But while the vans have technology to keep the food and drink chilled in the back, a surprising number don’t provide the same service to the humans in the

The writer is a partner at the Dutch law firm Resor As the world of decentralised finance continues to grow, there is much demand for a digital currency fit for use in blockchain-based applications with near-real-time, peer-to-peer global settlement that can be used as a medium of exchange. However, most cryptocurrencies are too volatile for

Pinterest shares surged more than 20 per cent after hedge fund Elliott Investment Management revealed itself as the company’s largest shareholder and expressed support for its new chief executive. The announcement helped offset disappointing second-quarter results from Pinterest that reflected softness in the digital advertising market, which has afflicted several of its social media rivals.

Conservative leadership contender Liz Truss on Monday opened a new front in her fight with the Whitehall “establishment”, vowing to cut civil service pay and holidays and refusing to rule out breaking up the Treasury. The foreign secretary has presented herself as a radical insurgent in her fight to become Britain’s next prime minister, portraying

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged 11 people in an alleged $300mn cryptocurrency pyramid scheme, highlighting how authorities are increasing enforcement in digital asset markets. The Wall Street watchdog said the scheme, known as Forsage, raised funds by using promoters to convince millions of investors worldwide to recruit others into the programme. “Forsage is

Nancy Pelosi has embarked on a tour of East Asia that officials signalled on Monday was likely to include a stopover in Taiwan, the first by a US House Speaker for 25 years. China warned that its military will “not sit idly by” if the visit goes ahead to the self-ruled island that Beijing claims

Senior Conservatives have urged the party’s two leadership candidates to commit to implementing the “levelling up” agenda that helped secure UK prime minister Boris Johnson a landslide election win in 2019, as new polling finds it more popular with prospective Tory voters than Brexit. The co-author of the party’s last manifesto and former ministers have

How does Rishi Sunak do it? He has to spend his summer not on a beach somewhere or in the company of his friends and family, but instead pressing the flesh among Conservative party members, knowing all the while that his chances of victory are slim. Still, he carries on, serving red meat to Tory

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, plans to meet Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday, in a controversial visit that has triggered concern about a possible military response from China. Three people familiar with the situation said Pelosi would meet Tsai in Taipei as part of a wider visit to Asia that

The writer is an FT contributing editor I had hoped never again to write about the lawnmower directive. Sad to say, three decades after the EU set a common standard for motorised grass-cutters and six years after the Brexit vote, Tory Eurosceptics have still not grasped that Britain cannot simply play the international game by

When an event provokes a public response from the Queen, the prime minister and the Spice Girls, questions about cut-through and relevance are quickly dispelled. The Queen described England’s Euro 2022 win on Sunday night as “an example that will be an inspiration for girls and women today, and for future generations”, Boris Johnson called

A former senior aide to Russian president Vladimir Putin is in hospital in Italy after being diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder, according to two people familiar with the matter. Anatoly Chubais, who quit his job as the Kremlin’s climate envoy in March shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, was hospitalised over the weekend in Olbia,

The writer is the FT’s architecture and design critic The first renderings of the new Saudi city of Neom were released last week, depicting a gleaming, mirrored, trillion-dollar channel slicing through the Tabuk desert. Intended to house 9mn residents over a length of 170km, according to the website, no one could accuse it of a

European shares and US stock futures kicked off the month on a lacklustre note, as disappointing Chinese factory data muddled the economic outlook. Following a rebound for beaten-down global equities in July, as markets responded to an economic slowdown by anticipating that high rates of inflation would ease, Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 share index edged

A grain shipment has left the port of Odesa for the first time in months, in a crucial test of a deal between Russia and Ukraine intended to alleviate soaring global food prices. The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, carrying 26,000 tonnes of Ukrainian corn, left the Black Sea Port at 9:48am local time, the ministry of

The venture capital world is in the grip of a silent crash. Unlike the stock market, there are no daily market indexes to broadcast the pain, and no individual share prices for anxious tech employees to watch as their personal wealth evaporates. In fact, for many of the investors and entrepreneurs who have just lived

Zoom into the “where we are” map on Automattic’s website, and you’ll search in vain for an “our headquarters” icon. The large but low-profile tech company behind WordPress and a host of other open source software has people working for it from Ghana to Greece, from San Diego to Seville. But its 2,031 staff, in

Joe Biden’s political prospects have just built back better. Last week’s passing of the Chips and Science Act by Congress breathed new life into the White House’s plans for industrial policy and support for US manufacturing. Meanwhile, the famously intransigent West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, the king of coal country, performed a shocking turnabout on

If Russian president Vladimir Putin completely shuts off the gas taps to Europe, what are the risks of the lights going out — or the heating turning off — in the UK? To listen to public statements from the government you could be forgiven for thinking the odds are exceptionally low: the UK has no