UK house prices hit a new high in June and are 30% higher than the peak they reached before the 2008 financial crisis, according to the latest snapshot of the market. The property website Zoopla said the average price of a home was £230,700 – as much as 5.4% higher than the same month a year...
After a long and tense election process, Pedro Castillo has been sworn as Peru’s president. His victory has shaken the political and business elite in a deeply polarised country hit hard by the pandemic. Born in a tiny village in one of Peru’s poorest areas, Pedro Castillo grew up helping his illiterate parents with farm...
The government will spend a record £5.2bn on reducing flooding in England over the next six years, as the climate crisis increases the risk to homes and businesses. The Environment Agency will spend £860m next year to support more than 1,000 schemes, with significant funds for Yorkshire and the Humber and the north-west, regions that have been...
A controversial Holocaust memorial and education centre is to be built in the heart of Westminster at a cost of more than £100m after the government gave it the go-ahead following a public inquiry. The Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomed the decision, saying there was “something uniquely powerful about locating a memorial to the Holocaust...
Australia’s top cyber spy says China’s actions in the hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software were akin to propping open the doors of thousands of homes and leaving them ajar for criminals to get inside. Rachel Noble, the director general of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), drew the analogy as she said the Chinese government’s actions...
There had never been so many people at a funeral in the history of Montedoro, a village suspended in time among wheat fields and abandoned sulphur mines in central Sicily. Its 1,500 inhabitants had waited for this moment for more than half a century, and on Wednesday gathered in hundreds in solemn prayer in the...
The UK’s competition watchdog has imposed fines of more than £100m on the pharmaceutical company Advanz and its former private equity owners after it was found to have inflated the price of its thyroid tablets by up to 6,000%. An investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that the private-equity backed pharmaceutical company charged...
It earned the nickname “Titanic of the mountains”, but now the monumental and ill-fated train station at Canfranc is to get a new life as a five-star hotel, 51 years after the international rail link across the Pyrenees closed. The story of Canfranc, a village more than 1,000 metres (3,280ft) above sea level on the...
Keir Starmer is preparing to support a purge of far-left factions that were vocal supporters of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. After 15 months of being party leader, Starmer is expected to support a proposal before the party’s governing body on Tuesday to proscribe four named groups. The proposal, first reported in the Daily Mirror, has angered leftwing...
Months of “frenzied buyer activity” have driven the average asking price for a home in Britain to a new high, according to the property website Rightmove. The property portal said it expected figures from HMRC due later this week to show that June was the busiest month on record for sales, with buyers rushing to...