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The Chinese economy grew at a faster rate than before the coronavirus pandemic in the fourth quarter of 2020, official data showed, as industrial production continued to drive the country’s recovery. Gross domestic product growth beat expectations to reach 6.5 per cent in the final quarter of last year, according to figures released on Monday,

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was detained by police on Sunday evening as he landed in Russia, having returned from Germany where he had recovered from an assassination attempt blamed on the Kremlin. Mr Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s best known and most outspoken critic, was detained upon arrival in Moscow, after his flight from Berlin

Thousands of National Guard troops were flooding into Washington on Saturday as the capital was fortified for the inauguration of Joe Biden, amid fears of a repeat of the violence that killed five people on Capitol Hill on January 6. The Pentagon has approved the deployment of 25,000 National Guard troops for the inauguration, while

Armin Laschet, prime minister of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, has been elected leader of the Christian Democratic Union, putting him in pole position to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor of Europe’s most powerful country.  Mr Laschet beat Friedrich Merz, a corporate lawyer, by 521 votes to 466 in a poll held in the

James Murdoch has castigated the US media for the “toxic politics” threatening American democracy, saying proprietors are as culpable as politicians who “know the truth but choose instead to propagate lies”. The remarks by Rupert Murdoch’s youngest son, made in an interview with the Financial Times and a further joint statement with his wife Kathryn,

JPMorgan Chase has released almost $3bn it had reserved for loan losses at the height of the pandemic, contributing to a 42 per cent surge in net income for the biggest US bank in the final three months of 2020 versus a year earlier. “While we reported record profits of $12.1bn, we do not consider

Joe Biden will ask Congress to spend $1.9tn on an economic rescue plan, including new direct payments to Americans, aid for state and local governments and more funding for the pandemic response. The plan, outlined by senior officials from Mr Biden’s incoming administration, will be unveiled by the US president-elect in a speech on Thursday

Joe Biden has urged congressional leaders to remain focused on tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and confirming his Cabinet nominees even as the US Senate prepares for the trial of Donald Trump. Faced with the prospect of a Senate impeachment trial starting in his first days in the White House, the president-elect urged senators to move

Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, held open the possibility that he would vote to convict Donald Trump in an impeachment trial, highlighting the growing division in the president’s party over his responsibility for the US Capitol attack. “I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to

Donald Trump is set to be the first president in US history to be impeached for a second time, as the House of Representatives prepares to vote on charging the outgoing president with inciting last week’s violent siege on the US Capitol. The House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats, is expected to hold

It is a Friday evening in Berlin and three middle-aged, dark-suited men are setting out their vision for the future of Germany — the last debate in a withering 10-month campaign for the leadership of the country’s most powerful political party. Friedrich Merz, a millionaire businessman, says he will “dare to make a fresh start,

Donald Trump warned that efforts by Democrats to impeach him for a second time were “causing tremendous anger” in the US and said he bore no responsibility for a violent attack on the US Capitol by his supporters last week. In his first unscripted remarks since the rampage in the nation’s capital, Mr Trump described

House Democrats on Monday introduced an article of impeachment against Donald Trump for the second time, levelling an unprecedented charge against the US president of inciting an insurrection. The move came as Democratic lawmakers pressed ahead with last-ditch efforts to force Mr Trump to leave the White House before the end of his term following

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has sharply criticised Twitter’s decision to ban US president Donald Trump, calling it a “problematic” breach of the “fundamental right to free speech”. Twitter suspended Mr Trump’s account last week in the aftermath of the riots at the Capitol, citing “repeated and severe” violations of its civic integrity policies. Facebook has

Senior US senators are resisting the drive to impeach Donald Trump for a historic second time, even as Democrats in the House of Representatives prepare to push ahead with their plan to do so this week. House Democrats plan to hold a vote on impeaching the president on Tuesday or Wednesday, having gathered nearly 200

Normally when a financial market rises amid a coup or extreme political instability, it is because the leftists are out and the animal spirits of business have been released. But last week in the US there was a different kind of result. Stock markets rallied, even as a group of pro-Donald Trump insurgents rampaged through

Democrats will launch a second attempt to remove Donald Trump from office on Monday when they introduce articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives over the rampage on Capitol Hill by the president’s supporters. Democratic Congressional aides said they had gathered more than 170 signatures of support for impeachment in two days — a

At the dais in the chamber of the Senate where Daniel Webster used a two-day speech to win the argument for a tightly-bound United States, where Jefferson Davis bid farewell to the union and future presidents such as Barack Obama honed their oratory, a shirtless man wearing a fur hat and Viking horns that seemed

Democrats in Congress are drawing up plans to impeach Donald Trump for a second time, as hopes fade of invoking the 25th amendment to forcibly remove the president from office after violent mobs of his supporters swarmed the US Capitol. “Donald Trump needs to be removed from office, and we are going to proceed with

Donald Trump conceded that Joe Biden would become US president this month, putting an end to his unprecedented campaign to overturn the results of November’s election. The president acknowledged his defeat as Democratic leaders mounted a push to forcibly remove him from office after he came under intense criticism for inciting a mob attack on

Donald Trump is facing growing isolation and outrage over the mob attack on the US Capitol, as Mick Mulvaney and other members of his administration resigned in protest over the president’s conduct. Mr Mulvaney, Mr Trump’s former acting chief of staff and a loyal supporter of the president, announced his decision to resign as Mr

Two of the most prominent Republicans in Washington defied Donald Trump’s last-gasp effort to nullify Joe Biden’s victory, with the party’s leader in the Senate warning that “democracy would enter a death spiral” if Congress overturned the result. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, said the presidential election was “not actually particularly close” and

US lawmakers were forced to suspend the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory and leave parts of the Capitol in Washington after Trump supporters pushed past police and stormed the building on Wednesday. The Capitol was put on lockdown after protesters — some carrying pro-Trump paraphernalia as well as flags of the US or the

Two US Senate elections in the state of Georgia that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the upper chamber of Congress were too close to call hours after polls closed on Tuesday night. The results of the two run-offs will prove pivotal for Joe Biden’s presidency: if Democrats win both contests, they will control

Donald Trump ratcheted up his desperate campaign to cling to power by pressuring vice-president Mike Pence to overturn the result of the presidential election when Congress meets to certify the vote on Wednesday. The certification of the vote at a joint session of Congress is normally a ceremonial occasion presided over by the vice-president, and

The New York Stock Exchange has backtracked on plans to delist three Chinese state-run telecoms groups, reversing a decision that had threatened to further inflame tensions between Washington and Beijing. The exchange had begun proceedings to delist China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom to comply with a Trump administration executive order that bars US

US equities had their worst day since October as faltering efforts to contain a global spike in coronavirus cases has raised the prospect of even more onerous lockdown measures in some of the world’s largest economies. Shares in more than 80 per cent of companies within the S&P 500 fell on the first trading day

The plight of two Canadians detained in China is a stark symbol of Beijing’s increased use of secret prisons and foreign nationals as political tools under President Xi Jinping, say human rights activists and former detainees. Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and entrepreneur Michael Spavor are among almost 30,000 people who have been held in

US president Donald Trump repeatedly pressed Georgia’s top election official to change the presidential vote tally in the state to ensure his victory over Joe Biden, in one of his most brazen attempts yet to cling to power. In an hour-long call with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, on Saturday, Mr Trump urged him

When the first coronavirus lockdowns were imposed outside China, billions of people around the world were forced to look online for communication, collaboration, entertainment and sustenance. But the story of tech’s role in the pandemic did not end there. Early lockdown hits such as Houseparty soon lost momentum, while some of the year’s biggest breakouts,