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China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise. Five people familiar with the test said the Chinese military launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.

Goldman Sachs reported a 60 per cent rise in quarterly profits, capping a week of bank earnings in which Wall Street firms reaped billions of dollars from a record burst of dealmaking. On Friday, Goldman reported third quarter group earnings per share of $14.93 on total net income of $5.4bn, up from $3.4bn a year

Japan’s new prime minister has pledged to move the country away from neoliberal fundamentalism as he lambasted his own party’s failure to deliver broad-based growth under the Abenomics programme that defined the economy for almost a decade. In his first interview with international media since taking over Japan’s leadership this month, Fumio Kishida told the

International bond sales by Chinese developers have all but halted as the crisis at China Evergrande stokes fears of defaults across the country’s property sector, throttling a crucial driver of Asia’s high-yield debt market. Just one developer has managed to tap overseas bond investors since Evergrande, the world’s most indebted real estate group, missed an

Extreme volatility in energy markets will present a continued risk unless investment in clean power is tripled in the next decade, the head of the International Energy Agency warned, as he issued a call to arms for world leaders ahead of the upcoming UN climate summit. Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, told the Financial Times

The IMF’s executive board has opted to retain Kristalina Georgieva as the institution’s managing director and said it had “full confidence” in her ability to carry out her responsibilities, despite allegations she pressured World Bank staff when she was its chief executive to manipulate data to China’s benefit. The announcement followed marathon meetings of the

The Kremlin’s ambassador to the EU has called on Europe to mend ties with Moscow in order to avoid future gas shortages, but insisted that Russia had nothing to do with the recent jump in prices. Vladimir Chizov, Russia’s permanent representative to the EU, said he expected Gazprom, the state-controlled exporter that supplies 35 per

Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has resigned, just days after he was named as a suspect in an investigation by state prosecutors into grand corruption at the heart of the Austrian government. In a brief statement on Saturday evening at the Ballhausplatz — the seat of the chancellery in Vienna — Kurz said it had been

More than 130 countries have signed up to a ground-breaking global deal on corporate tax reform that the OECD hopes will eliminate tax havens while bringing in $150bn more a year from multinationals. The 136 nations also agreed to a two-year ban on imposing new taxes on tech groups such as Google and Amazon while

China has ordered coal miners to boost production urgently as the energy crisis threatens factories across the world’s second-biggest economy and forces Xi Jinping’s administration to backtrack on climate change promises. Energy officials in Inner Mongolia, one of China’s largest coal producing regions, instructed 72 local miners to expand capacity by 100m tonnes, according to

Republicans and Democrats in Congress opened the door to a temporary solution to America’s debt ceiling crisis on Wednesday, saying they would consider a stop-gap measure extending the country’s borrowing limit until December. The potential breakthrough came after Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, offered to support a short-term extension of the nation’s debt limit

Private equity firms are offering the highest premiums for listed companies in more than two decades, paying almost 70 per cent above the prior share price in some cases, in a sign of the widening gap between cash-rich buyout groups and public market investors. Buyout groups paid an average premium of 45 per cent for

Oil prices jumped to the highest level in at least three years after Opec and its allies agreed to stick with existing oil production plans, resisting calls to help damp soaring global energy prices to protect the economic recovery. Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, rose 3 per cent on Monday to trade as high

A Facebook whistleblower accused the company on Sunday of placing “profit over safety”, as it emerged that she had complained to US securities regulators that it was misleading investors. Speaking on the news programme 60 Minutes, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, unmasked herself as the whistleblower who leaked a trove of internal company

Nancy Pelosi has given her warring party one more month to pass a $1.2tn infrastructure bill after the party failed to come to an agreement on Joe Biden’s spending plans despite a week of frantic negotiations on Capitol Hill. The Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives wrote to Democratic Congressional colleagues on Saturday morning

Joe Biden insisted Democrats would pass his ambitious domestic spending agenda despite interparty feuding that has stymied its passage, saying “we’re going to get this done” after a rare Capitol Hill visit to lobby lawmakers. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, was due to bring the US president’s $1.2tn infrastructure legislation

Nancy Pelosi appeared determined to press ahead with a make-or-break vote on Joe Biden’s $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill in the US House of Representatives on Thursday, even as progressive lawmakers threatened to sink the flagship piece of the president’s legislative agenda. “We are proceeding in a very positive way to bring up the bill . . . in a

Joe Biden and congressional Democrats were locked in tense negotiations on Wednesday evening at what the White House called a “precarious and important time” for the US president’s sweeping legislative agenda. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, met Biden at the White House for

Wall Street and European stock markets dropped sharply as fears of interest rate increases and stagflation upended a narrative of economic recovery and easy monetary policy that has supported asset prices for months. The blue-chip S&P 500 share index fell nearly 1.7 per cent while the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.5 per cent. Europe’s Stoxx

Two top Fed officials on Monday warned that failing to raise the US debt ceiling would have catastrophic consequences, hours before Republicans in the Senate were set to block a bill that would increase the borrowing limit and stave off a government shutdown. John Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said