MoneyWeek

Last week was a tough week for Big Oil, with ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron all losing climate-related battles with varying consequences (Alex explains the details on page 7). Perhaps not coincidentally, the last couple of weeks have been rather posit

Have Chinese shares turned a corner? The benchmark CSI 300 has tumbled by 8% since mid-February, but the index enjoyed its biggest weekly gain in three months last week, including a 3.2% leap on 25 May. That was its best one-day performance in almost

“England faces the tensest two weeks of its entire lockdown,” says Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. On 14 June, the government will decide whether “Freedom Day” on 21 June will go ahead as promised. It has been cast into doubt by a surge in cases of th

Biden’s tax and spend plans: President Joe Biden (pictured) unveiled his $6trn budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 (which ends on 30 September) last Friday, charting his vision of “an expansive federal government role in the economy and the lives of

In a bill trailed in a white paper last summer, and now announced in last month’s Queen’s Speech, the government is proposing the most radical shake-up of planning laws since 1947. Under legislation to be brought forward in the autumn, local councils

capx.co In his seven hours in front of the parliamentary select committee, Boris Johnson’s former senior adviser Dominic Cummings blamed “system failure” for the government’s inadequacies, says Ryan Bourne. Yet when pushed on why things had gone wro

Early next month sees the launch of a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) that aims to boldly go where no other ETF has gone before: space. ETF specialists HANetf and Procure Innovation are about to launch the Procure Space UCITS ETF in London with the ir

Even hermits have heard of the collapses of Australia’s Greensill Capital, named after its founder Lex Greensill; America’s Archegos Capital (named from the Greek word for “leader” by its founder, Bill Hwang); and Germany’s Wirecard AG – a tiny casua

When should you start saving for retirement and how much should you put by? The conventional answers to these questions are as soon as possible and as much as you can afford. But the conventional answers may be wrong, according to new research by the

Investing in e-commerce and payments businesses around the world should keep paying off nicely for years to come as global wealth increases. But the fastest growth in this area is likely to take place in Latin America. Rapidly expanding internet acce

Electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) has epitomised the boom in tech shares. Despite predictions from a range of pundits that the surging stock was about to slump, it has gone from strength to strength, while the group has started turni

Soon after The Hut Group’s (THG) bumper flotation last autumn, Bill Gates wrote to founder Matt Moulding congratulating him and asking what his plans were. It was a sign that the buff boy from Burnley had joined the international big league. Moulding

“Time in western Sicily is peculiar,” says Alistair Taylor-Young in Condé Nast Traveller. “The map of the Mediterranean was once, to many, the chart of the known world.” And right in the centre of it all was Sicily. Look at the island this way, and “

Granary House, Rotherhithe, London SE16. A two-bedroom apartment in a converted warehouse in the docklands area of Rotherhithe. The flat has contemporary fixtures and fittings, but retains its original wooden beams. 2 beds, bath, open-plan living/kit

It’s obviously impossible to play pool on a table that is not level, so that makes a game out at sea somewhat problematic. Luxury car maker Bugatti has the answer. Its latest high-tech pool table makes playing on a yacht as easy as it is at home. The

Diego Maradona, who died late last year, was considered one of the greatest footballers of his generation and used his skills to take him from a home “where the only running water came from the holes in the roof” to “a new existence of global fame be

Poor Jeff Bezos. He’s the richest man in the world: $188bn at the last count. Yet, through no fault of his own, he is cast as a villain. An enemy of the people. A showoff with a carbon footprint as big as Texas. Now, it turns out he’s a tax-dodger, t