↩ Accueil

Vue lecture

Markets on track for worst week since April as AI bubble fears mount; UK borrowing exceeds forecasts in October – business live

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Shares are falling faster than wickets in Perth at the start of trading in London, as fears of an AI bubble rip through markets again.

Following losses on Wall Street last night, the FTSE 100 share index has dropped by 104 points, or just over 1%, at the start of trading to 9423 points. That’s a one-month low.

it’s been a truly remarkable 24 hours, with a sequence of moves that were almost impossible to predict….

After the world’s largest company reported spectacular results, the stock was up around +5% by 3pm London time. It closed down -3.15%. The broader market followed a similar pattern: the S&P 500 initially climbed +1.93%, only to fade and close down -1.56% as doubts about AI valuations crept back in. That marked the biggest intra-day swing for the S&P since the six days of extreme market turmoil that followed the Liberation Day tariffs in early April. Adding to the negative backdrop for crypto were lingering questions over the crypto market structure bill that’s being worked on in Congress.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

  •  

Golovkin to be elected World Boxing president and lead buildup to 2028 Olympics

  • Former world champion promises to restore trust in sport

  • World Boxing replaced IBA as governing body this year

The former world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin is to be elected president of World Boxing and lead the sport as it heads towards the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

Golovkin, who won Olympic silver in Athens in 2004 and went on to make the most world title defences in middleweight history, is the only presidential candidate approved by the sport’s independent vetting panel for Sunday’s election.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

© Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

© Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

  •  

EU economy is geared towards a disappearing world, says ECB’s Lagarde

European Central Bank president says Europe’s dependence on international trade has made it vulnerable

Europe’s economy is “geared towards a world that is gradually disappearing”, according to a warning from Christine Lagarde that the EU needs reforms to spur growth.

The president of the European Central Bank (ECB) said the EU’s dependence on international trade had left it vulnerable, as major partners had turned away from the trade that made the bloc’s exporters wealthy.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Heiko Becker/Reuters

© Photograph: Heiko Becker/Reuters

© Photograph: Heiko Becker/Reuters

  •  

Swiss gold and Rolex gifts to Trump raise questions over personalisation of US presidential power

Italian MEP ‘disgusted’ after US president received $130,000 engraved gold bar weeks before he decided to slash tariffs on Swiss imports

A gold Rolex desk clock and a $130,000 engraved gold bar given to Donald Trump by a group of Swiss billionaires have raised questions in Europe and the US about the personalisation of US presidential power.

Pasquale Tridico, an Italian MEP and the former head of the country’s National Institute for Social Security said he was “disgusted” by the golden charm offensive, made weeks before Trump decided to slash 39% tariffs on Swiss imports to 15%.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

  •  

Inseparable, sensuous and confident, the Kessler twins were pioneers of variety show culture

Alice and Ellen Kessler, who died by joint assisted suicide this week, entertained – and occasionally scandalised – Europe with their glitzy and subversive pop music and classically informed dance

The Kessler twins die together aged 89 – news

When Dean Martin announced the Kessler sisters’ appearance on his show in 1966, he remarked that he had been desperate to book them not just because the German-born dancer-singers were “so pretty and so talented”, but “also because they’re twins, that means there are two of them”. “They’re a double,” he added with a nod to his half-drunk crooner persona, “and there’s nothing I like more than a double”.

The two sisters, who died by joint assisted suicide earlier this week, also performed with Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte and Fred Astaire, but the American market never impressed them much. In 1964 they turned down a role in Elvis’s Viva Las Vegas for fear of being pigeonholed in American musical comedies.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

  •  

Run-up to G20 in South Africa marred by host’s simmering row with US

Group’s first summit on the continent, which opens on Saturday, comes at a febrile time in global politics

The dispute between South Africa and the US over the Trump administration’s decision to boycott the G20 in Johannesburg has continued, with South Africa objecting to a US plan for a junior embassy official to take part in the closing ceremony meant to mark the handover to the next summit, which will take place in Florida.

The two-day summit, which opens on Saturday, comes at a febrile moment in global politics. The US has proposed a deal to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which it agreed with Moscow without the involvement of Ukraine or the EU.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

  •  

Digested week: Trump’s weird ‘piggy’ jibe expands his cutesy-sinister lexicon

Plus Vanity Fair’s plucky decision to feature only men in its Hollywood Issue and the reporter fired after RFK Jr ‘sexting scandal’

We’ve all said things that didn’t come out right, and it’s my instinct – stand by for some counter-intuition! – that Donald Trump’s “quiet, piggy” admonishment of a female reporter on Air Force One this week, was a very weird attempt at affection, or possibly, flirtation. As with everything the man does, the effect was disastrous and totally inappropriate. But rewatching the video, I saw from the president less an example of his usual bigotry and more an attempt at what looked like “OK, kiddo” cuteness that, catastrophically, and before I could nip it in the bud, had triggered a tiny sprig of sympathy.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

  •  

Nigeria reels after second mass school abduction in a week

Students taken from Catholic school in Niger state amid threats from Donald Trump to intervene to end what he calls a ‘Christian genocide’

Unknown gunmen have abducted an unidentified number of students from a Catholic school in central Nigeria, the second mass abduction in the country in a week.

The latest kidnapping, in Papiri community in Niger state, came against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threat to intervene militarily to end a “Christian genocide”, which the Nigerian government has denied is happening.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Africa Independent Television/AIT/Reuters

© Photograph: Africa Independent Television/AIT/Reuters

© Photograph: Africa Independent Television/AIT/Reuters

  •  

‘Justin Bieber is an insanely courageous artist’: Tobias Jesso Jr on how he became the songwriter to the stars

He has penned hits for Adele, Dua Lipa and Bieber, but the sought-after Canadian pop songwriter has only ever released one album himself. Now, 10 years on, comes a second –and it’s a scorching account of a breakup

Goon, the 2015 debut album by Canada-born LA musician Tobias Jesso Jr, was one of the revelations of the 2010s. An album of heartfelt, earnest ballads in the vein of 70s singer-songwriters such as Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, it instantly established Jesso as a rising indie star and was one of the year’s most acclaimed records. The problem was that Jesso didn’t care much for the attention: he struggled to feel like a genuine performer, leading him to drink heavily before shows, and felt he was playing a version of himself in interviews. “I was forced to do all these things I wasn’t really confident in,” he says. “I was just like … I don’t know what I’m doing, anywhere.” So, toward the end of his breakout year, he cancelled all future shows and, in essence, put his career on ice.

In the decade that followed, he kept himself behind the scenes, in the process becoming one of the world’s most successful and in-demand pop songwriters – thanks, in no small part, to his focus on simple, emotions-first songwriting. He co-wrote Adele’s hit When We Were Young and a handful of tracks on Dua Lipa’s 2024 album Radical Optimism; has collaborated with Harry Styles, Justin Bieber, FKA twigs and Haim; and in 2023 won the first ever Grammy for songwriter of the year.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Justin Chung

© Photograph: Justin Chung

© Photograph: Justin Chung

  •  

‘The sword swung so close to her head!’ What it’s like to commit one of TV’s most unforgivable murders

From Claire Foy’s Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall to Adriana in The Sopranos, we meet the actors who had to bump off TV legends … and then face the wrath of the public

Talk about being a pantomime villain. It’s unpopular enough playing the antagonist who murders a long-running TV character. When your victim is a fan favourite, though, you risk being vilified even more. So what’s it like being the ultimate baddy and breaking viewers’ hearts? Do they get booed in the street or trolled online? We asked five actors who killed off beloved characters – from Spooks to The Sopranos, Wolf Hall to Westeros – about their experiences …

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Giles Keyte/Giles Keyte / Company Pictures and Playground 2013

© Photograph: Giles Keyte/Giles Keyte / Company Pictures and Playground 2013

© Photograph: Giles Keyte/Giles Keyte / Company Pictures and Playground 2013

  •