Author: James Harden

Cars form long queues to refuel at a Rosneft petrol station in St. Petersburg, Russia, on September 15, 2026.Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty ImagesU.S. President Donald Trump is expected to pressure his Ukrainian counterpart to agree to an energy truce with Russia in a high-stakes meeting on Tuesday, saying that Moscow has “unfortunately lost control” of its diesel oil industry due to the war.Trump is set to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, in a rare sit-down meeting of the two leaders at a high-level event. The…

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Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Russian politics myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Nearly 50 veterans of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will enter Russia’s parliament after the Kremlin’s leading party secured its best-ever result in last week’s elections.United Russia, which is backed by the Russian president and was set to capture about 58 per cent of the vote, will field 49 Ukraine war veterans in the Duma, the lower house of parliament, according to the party’s general secretary Vladimir Yakushev.The heavy presence of veterans, who previously served in units that Ukraine has accused…

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Mike Doustdar, chief executive officer of Novo Nordisk A/S, during an interview in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesNovo CEO Mike Doustdar told CNBC that the pharmaceutical giant is considering M&A opportunities as it faces growing competition in the crowded weight-loss market. “Let’s see where the gaps are, and let’s go out and see who has produced or is about to introduce better drugs than we are able to do on our own, and when that gap can be filled with M&A, we are actually quite interested about it,” Doustdar told…

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.On the face of it, Germany’s beleaguered chancellor Friedrich Merz has a lot in common with ousted UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer. Both had to contend with a sluggish economy, high energy costs and crumbling infrastructure — as well as the implosion of their personal brand. But Merz, who has vowed to fight on after a “disaster” election result in the election in the — admittedly small — state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, does have one rather sizeable advantage Starmer never had: money…

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Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Property sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Deutsche Bank’s asset manager DWS is considering emergency measures to stave off a liquidity crunch at three of its German property funds, as an investor exodus puts mounting pressure on the country’s €100bn-plus property fund industry.Three DWS “Grundbesitz” open-ended funds have collectively paid out €6bn to investors — around half of their assets under management — since 2022, forcing them to sell properties worth €4.5bn and pushing their borrowing towards statutory limits, fund disclosures show. DWS is now considering limiting redemptions or…

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.China accounted for 40 per cent of global container exports on a rolling average over the past three months, according to the head of the European business chamber in the country, underscoring how the world’s second-largest economy is relying on trade to power economic growth.That figure also represented a 2.5 percentage point increase in just nine months, suggesting that global trade imbalances were growing more quickly than expected, said Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. “I…

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USA

While President Donald Trump’s war with the networks dominates the headlines, a far more consequential fight is unfolding in a Lower Manhattan courthouse. At stake? The economics of journalism itself, and the war is sparking options traders’ interest.On Friday, newly unsealed statements from Microsoft and OpenAI executives threatened the “fair-use” defense in the New York Times lawsuit. The defense rests on showing that the accused product is neither a substitute for nor a direct competitor to the source work. According to the unsealed material, an OpenAI executive allegedly acknowledged their chatbots were exactly that: an “existential threat” to journalism, delivering…

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Chancellor Friedrich Merz has hit out at “destructive” populist parties gaining ground in Germany as he battles for his political future following a string of electoral victories for the far right. In a news conference on Monday, Merz acknowledged that widespread discontent with his government as well as his own personal unpopularity had played a role in what he called a “dramatic result” for his Christian Democratic Union in Sunday’s regional election.For the first time in any regional vote in Germany’s postwar history, the CDU missed the 5 per cent threshold to enter parliament in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The far-right Alternative for…

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