World News

The directive comes hours after Donald Trump said the US will pause migration from "third-world countries".

The overnight attack kills at least three and leaves many in the Ukrainian capital.

The issue is thought to affect 6,000 planes, which will need to undergo an urgent software update or have computers replaced.

We visited festive markets in the UK and Germany to check which come closest to the real deal.

Analysts instead blame criminal gangs for the kidnapping of more than 250 schoolchildren last week.

At least 128 people have died and hundreds remain unaccounted for following the fire which engulfed several tower blocks.

Andriy Yermak, 54, has been the Ukrainian president's chief of staff throughout Russia's full-scale war.

Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced in the US to 45 years behind bars for conspiring to smuggle cocaine.

Senegal's prime minister and Nigeria's former leader say they do not believe the military takeover was genuine.

People who left Afghanistan urge the US president not to toughen his stance after an attack allegedly carried out by an Afghan national.

Drone attack hits Bani Suheila in southern Gaza amid continued Israeli attacks on the enclave.

Major Israeli offensive has also destroyed roads, water networks and private property.

Some 44,000 people displaced by flooding across the country as relief operations intensify amid widespread destruction.

Hong Kong began a five-day mourning period, after at least 128 people were killed in fires at a high-rise complex.

President Zelenskyy’s chief of staff has resigned after investigators searched his home amid a corruption scandal.

Key dates, teams, players, venues, favourites and tickets ahead of the 11th edition of the quadrennial tournament.

At least 128 people died and 150 remain missing after the towers housing 4,600 people were engulfed by flames.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have been inundated with cyclone-driven rain for a week, killing about 400 people.

Authorities also designate Anti-Corruption Foundation as 'terrorist' group and consider total ban on WhatsApp.

At least three people have been killed and 29 injured in the attacks that left Kyiv's west without electricity.

The UK Budget is unlikely to prevent the Bank of England cutting rates

The Economics Show 🤜🤛 Alphaville

Robust consumer spending helps economy shrug off early impact of Trump tariffs

Crucial holiday sales period forecast to draw record crowds but with tighter budgets

Also in today’s newsletter, Trump threatens sweeping immigration crackdown, and memorable office blunders

Read the November forecast from the FT’s Monetary Policy Radar team

From 2029, workers will only be able to pay £2,000 into the scheme and receive tax relief

Global politicians need to understand that White House policy is driven by melodrama and instinct

Jakarta’s rejection of coercive clauses challenges effort by Donald Trump to counter Chinese influence in south-east Asia

Once the world’s factory, Beijing’s relentless focus on R&D means the country has become the world’s laboratory

U.S. ISM surveys on manufacturing and services activity, plus the latest ADP private payrolls, will be watched closely for confirmation that the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates at its next meeting.

Canada’s economy recovered far more strongly than anticipated in the latest quarter, pulled out of its decline by a bounce-back in net trade and a surge in defense spending that helped mask weak domestic demand.

German inflation climbed in November, despite French inflation holding steady and inflation in Spain and Italy inching lower.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s cabinet on Friday approved a draft supplementary budget for the fiscal year ending March 2026 that is worth 18.303 trillion yen, or about $117.10 billion.

Sales fell 4% across the U.K., with buyer demand down 12% on year on fears of higher property taxes in the budget, according to a report by real-estate agency Zoopla.

Resilient factory activity and consumption despite headwinds from tariffs and inflation suggest that conditions for the Bank of Japan to resume monetary tightening are being met.

Economies that escaped from Communism are at risk if older voters and political leaders prevent changes to offset aging populations.

A large-scale trade war has been averted, but uncertainty remains high about government policies that can affect the financial system, the European Central Bank vice president said.

Europeans believe that income inequality has increased since the onset of the inflation surge.

Government revenues from taxes on U.S. businesses could rise significantly over coming years, despite higher tariffs.

Endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, suicide and gaslighting ... they are all laid bare on the singer-writer’s new album. But just as she finished recording it, she got a shock diagnosis. She explains why it’s made her determined to be in the moment

You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was preparing for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler having struggled to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then second single, Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while still secretly living with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.

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The Daily Mail owner has the Telegraph titles in his sights as part of a long-held ambition to create a dominant stable of rightwing newspapers

Waiting two decades for another chance to snaffle a prized business acquisition is a luxury not afforded to many executives. The Rothermere family, however, takes a more relaxed approach to time.

While most business boards draw up five-year plans, the Rothermeres, having compiled a feared media empire over more than a century, are used to thinking in terms of generations.

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There have been many good points – challenging orthodoxies and Ben Stokes talking openly about male emotions – and even when it was bad, it was unignorable

The Life Cycle of a Cult
1. The Big Idea. A charismatic leader or leaders propose a new and transcendent idea that promises a panacea for alienated and vulnerable people.

So here we are then. They’re getting ready to storm the compound down in Brisbane. The gunships are circling. Smoke is rising from the out-houses. A lone figure, naked, shivering, the words HIGH RELEASE POINT smeared across his chest in chicken blood, has come staggering through the lines and is being led away under a blanket towards an inconclusive loan stint at Derbyshire.

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Methanol, a cheap relative of ethanol, is entering the supply chain, causing thousands of deaths around the world

For Bethany Clarke, poison tasted like nothing. There was no bitter aftertaste, no astringent sting at the back of the tongue. If anything, she thought in passing, the free shots she and her friends were drinking at a hostel bar in Laos had probably been watered down – she wasn’t detecting a strong vodka flavour through the veil of Sprite she had mixed it with.

All in all, Clarke remembers drinking about five of those shots, sitting with her best friend, Simone White, and a crowd of others at the hostel’s happy hour. CCTV footage shows the group laughing in the warm air of the open bar in the town of Vang Vieng, green and red lights dancing over their shoulders.

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Survey data suggests more and more girls can’t imagine getting married, while their male counterparts are keener. That disparity holds a clue

According to recent data, marriages in England and Wales are down by nearly 9% after a post-pandemic spike, while civil partnerships have risen by almost the same percentage. This downward trend is also reflected in the US. The Vatican has piped up in defence of the institution, releasing a 40-page doctrinal note, Una Caro (One Flesh): In Praise of Monogamy: Doctrinal Note on the Value of Marriage as an Exclusive Union and Mutual Belonging. Sworn celibates would not be my personal first port of call when seeking relationship advice, but to each their own – exclusively and indissolubly, if the Catholic church is to be believed.

Among the younger crowd, gendered expectations about marriage are changing, at least according to a survey by the University of Michigan, which found that only 61% of high-school girls want to be married one day, compared to 74% of the boys. Perhaps this is behind the burgeoning genre of opinion pieces in which a rightwing man complains that women don’t want to date him. Often enough, he is an avowed libertarian, leaving it a mystery why he does not simply accept the workings of the free market.

Naoise Dolan is an Irish writer and the author of Exciting Times and The Happy Couple

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If ‘naked dressing’ is a stretch too far, sheer fabrics can provide a real-life friendly compromise

Fashion loves nothing more than an extreme trend, one difficult to imagine transferring to most people’s everyday lives. See naked dressing, where stars on the red carpet wear transparent and sometimes barely there gowns.

This party season, however, there appears to be a real-life friendly compromise. Enter the sheer skirt.

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Exclusive: Chancellor says she made ‘fair and necessary choices’ in budget, and was unwilling to make cuts

Britain’s wealthy must shoulder the burden of paying to rebuild the UK’s “creaky” public services, Rachel Reeves has said, as she warned Labour MPs that leadership speculation was bad for the country.

The chancellor said she had opted to increase taxes by £26bn in this week’s budget to improve schools, hospitals and infrastructure, rejecting calls to “cut our cloth accordingly” after a downgrade in productivity forecasts.

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Exclusive: UCL scientists find large swathes of southern Europe are drying up, with ‘far-reaching’ implications

Vast swathes of Europe’s water reserves are drying up, a new analysis using two decades of satellite data reveals, with freshwater storage shrinking across southern and central Europe, from Spain and Italy to Poland and parts of the UK.

Scientists at University College London (UCL), working with Watershed Investigations and the Guardian, analysed 2002–24 data from satellites, which track changes in Earth’s gravitational field.

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Exclusive: Rail regulator pulls Avanti service from timetable from mid-December but it is needed for staff travel

The good news for rail travel between Manchester and London is that a morning train will continue to link the two cities in under two hours. The bad news: passengers will no longer be able to get onboard.

The rail regulator has axed one of Britain’s fastest and most lucrative intercity services, the 7am Avanti West Coast from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston, as part of a timetable shake-up that will take effect in mid-December.

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Welsh government grants used to fund football club even though it is owned by wealthy movie stars

Wrexham AFC has risen meteorically through the English football leagues thanks to the deep pockets of Hollywood movie star owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. Yet the club has also had £18m in help from other, unwitting backers: Welsh taxpayers.

The club has received almost £18m in nonrepayable grants from the Welsh government via the local council, according to UK government state aid disclosures – far in excess of the direct aid listed for any other football club in Britain.

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Hong Kong is beginning a period of three days of mourning for the victims of the city's deadliest fire since 1948. China has launched a fire safety inspection campaign for high-rise buildings across the country.

Dan Driscoll's first visit left behind mixed feelings in Kyiv. As US President Donald Trump's envoy, he will soon return to Ukraine to negotiate a peace plan.

Juan Orlando Hernandez was extradited to the US after he was convicted of trafficking cocaine. Trump claimed Hernandez was "treated very harshly and unfairly."

Moldova and Romania are witnessing serious airspace violations by Russian drones. Moldova is virtually defenseless, but the Romanian government is playing down the incidents, calling them "accidents."

Russian missiles and drones slammed residential Kyiv overnight, killing two civilians and injuring dozens, including a child. Meanwhile, Russia has banned the NGO Human Rights Watch as "undesirable." DW has the latest.

The story of runaway sisters who refused to return to their senior center made headlines across the globe.

The decision is the latest shift in immigration policy since the National Guard shooting. It follows Trump's call to end migration from "all third world countries."

Next week's meeting between Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame is expected to seal a peace deal brokered by US President Donald Trump in June.

In the first leg of the Nations League Final, Germany missed a whole host of chances to take a lead to Madrid. Spain looked second best.

European aviation giant Airbus said it was ordering a software fix on a significant number of its A320 family of jets. These changes may cause travel disruptions over the weekend.

Following Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's military chief, new ambassador Michel Issa urged Lebanon to implement its 'historic' decision to disarm Hezbollah. He declined to comment on the likelihood of diplomatic talks between Israel and Lebanon

When the language is hijacked for political ends, the Israeli establishment becomes a crushing weight on Hebrew writers. A response to Oded Carmeli

On the TV screen: celebrity chefs swooning over freshly picked olives from lush trees. On the ground: settlers violently preventing Palestinian farmers from harvesting the fruit in their own meager groves

Violent settlers are rapidly erecting new outposts and relentlessly harassing Wadi Qelt residents. After another family fled last week, only a handful of residents remain, living under constant threat

The poll, released by the Jewish People Policy Institute, found that two-thirds of American Jews believe Mamdani's election will lead to Jews feeling less safe, while a third feel 'hopeful' about the 34-year-old mayor elect

Israel has carried out almost daily airstrikes since the November 2024 cease-fire, mainly targeting Hezbollah members, but 127 civilians have also been killed, according to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

The UN Committee against Torture expressed 'particular concern' that the number of deaths in custody to date 'appears to be abnormally high and appears to have exclusively affected the Palestinian detainee population'

Dr. Yolanda Yavor, a scholar known for protesting outside Netanyahu's home, was questioned on incitement in a Facebook post, after a far-right group lodged a complaint. Police are now seeking to extend her custody

For the prime minister and Defense Minister Israel Katz, every concession in matters of appointments and powers is an opening for more demands. Katz, whose eyes are on the Likud primary, wields an appalling cynicism, when he's not forgoing a legal basis altogether

As the evidence piles up, scientists are urging Southeast Asia’s governments to wake up to the rare earth pollution crisis.

A recent survey highlighted that less than a third of the Australian population believe that “people in government can be trusted.”

The phone call and implications for the Indo-Pacific

Instead of challenging China’s maritime claims unilaterally, outside powers would do better to collaborate more closely with Southeast Asian claimant states.

The two reports relate to the Nellie massacre of 1983, when mobs attacked villages inhabited by Bengali-origin Muslims, killing over 1,800 people.

As they have grown more alienated from the West, relations between the two repressive governments have blossomed.

Taiwan doesn’t need AUKUS membership to strengthen Pillar II’s force multiplier effect.

How did the online scam industry take root in Southeast Asia, and how did it grow to such massive proportions?

Have the country's real estate prices become untethered from the basic economic forces of supply and demand?

The current turbulence in global politics prompted IBSA to hold a summit for the first time in 14 years. India, Canada and Australia also announced a new trilateral grouping.

Juan Orlando Hernández was accused of receiving millions in bribes and partnering with cocaine traffickers. He was convicted in Manhattan in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

The university will pay $75 million to regain its research funding and end investigations, the second highest payment by a school facing pressure from the administration.

They discussed a possible meeting between the two of them, but nothing has been scheduled, and the administration continues to increase the military pressure on Venezuela.

The Trump administration has been trying to repair the damage from the detention of hundreds of South Koreans in an immigration raid in Georgia.

Red ribbons adorned one city, while blue ribbons hung in another town — all to honor the National Guard members who were attacked in Washington this week.

They were the latest restrictive changes to the immigration system after this week’s shooting of two National Guard members.

The president is furiously demanding limits on migration and attacking ethnic groups as he steps up his efforts to equate immigration with crime and economic distress.

Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, who died on Thursday, was not initially excited to go to Washington, but had grown to enjoy the city. Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe remained in critical condition on Friday.

After Beijing reshaped the political order in Hong Kong in its image, the fire has become a test of how well that new system can govern in a crisis.

Residents of Wang Fuk Court apartments had raised concerns about flammable foam panels and scaffold netting, but the government did not take decisive action.

US Federal Reserve officials would rather “stick to their knitting” than confront the complex forces that are reshaping the economy. Unless the next Fed chair shakes the institution out of its complacency, continued policy-induced volatility and intensifying political attacks are all but guaranteed.

As many European leaders acknowledge, the United States has left Europe (including the United Kingdom and Norway) with no choice but to see to its own defense. Using frozen Russian assets to provide a Reparations Loan to Ukraine is a forceful step in this direction that Europeans could take without US involvement.

While Donald Trump's use of the presidency to enrich himself is unprecedented in American history, it does have analogues in Russia and other former communist countries. In fact, by appointing incompetent subordinates who owe him everything, Trump recalls a tried-and-tested Stalinist practice.

Behind the facade of unity, global banking supervisors are split between fear of over-regulation and concern that easing rules invites a repeat of the 2007-09 financial crisis. With the US rethinking supervision and scaling back enforcement, its break from Basel III is becoming increasingly obvious.

For now, and in the foreseeable future, fiscal adjustment is a political non-starter in the US, where the prospect of higher taxes or cuts to Social Security and Medicare is a surefire way to lose votes. But this is probably where the country is headed, though it may take a severe fiscal crisis to get there.

As authoritarian leaders seek to delegitimize independent news and AI blurs the line between facts and falsehoods, journalists around the world are fighting to be heard above a rising tide of misinformation and propaganda. In this environment, news outlets must assert their independence through rigorous reporting.

Under President Donald Trump, entrusting inexperienced loyalists to handle issues of national and global concern has become the norm, and personal enrichment the through line of US foreign policy. The result is the Ukraine "peace deal" Trump's cronies cooked up.

The world is facing an inequality crisis fueled by stagnant wages, eroding social protections, and the extreme concentration of wealth. Reversing these trends requires reassessing the policies that produced them and equipping governments with the information they need to pursue effective reforms.

From Ireland to Palestine, the 20th century’s partitions promised stability but delivered bloodshed, animosity, and ethnic cleansing. A new book traces how the breakup of the British Indian Empire unleashed a chain of upheavals that redefined South Asia and shaped the modern world.

With the group's rotating presidency passing to the United States, many expect that Donald Trump’s presence at the helm will further reduce the effectiveness of a once-promising multilateral economic institution. But that need not be the case if Trump focuses on two issues.

Russia launched a series of massive air attacks on Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands with the country already reeling from a political scandal that has reached the upper echelons of power.

Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) are conducting searches in the office of the presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, NABU said in a statement on November 28.

The United States said it is halting all immigration requests relating to Afghanistan after an Afghan national shot two members of the National Guard, one of whom died a day after the shooting near the White House.

Three Chinese citizens working for a gold-extraction company in southern Tajikistan have been killed in an attack -- the second in a year -- that Tajik authorities say was carried out from across the border with Afghanistan.

The United States will immediately stop all immigration requests relating to Afghanistan after an Afghan national shot and critically wounded two members of the National Guard not far from the White House in Washington, D.C., on November 26.

White House envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow next week, the Kremlin said, amid accelerating efforts to cement a US-backed peace proposal that many Ukrainians -- and European leaders -- are wary of.

US President Donald Trump said he is sending special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin over a peace deal with Ukraine that Kyiv says it it ready "to move forward" on as some final "sensitive" points are ironed out.

The Taliban-led government in Afghanistan has vowed a "necessary response" after air strikes allegedly carried out by Pakistan killed at least 10 people -- nine of whom were children -- in the eastern border region between the two countries.

German and Romanian fighter jets scrambled on November 25 to track the latest in a series of drone incursions into the NATO-member’s airspace as Russia continues to attack targets just across the Danube River in neighboring Ukraine. One local mayor said we now "consider ourselves part of the war."

Amid massive Russian strikes on cities across Ukraine, one group of firefighters was forced to battle a blaze engulfing their own vehicle after what they claim was a targeted drone strike.