2025-12-04 13:00:14
It’s apparently a fantastic time to be a first-time homebuyer in Britain. A mix of lower interest rates, fatter salaries and slow house-price growth has improved affordability for those looking to get on the property ladder. Data from Lloyds Banking Group shows the price of a typical first home is just 5.9 times the average wannabe buyer’s salary, down from 6.2 at the end of 2024. The last time the ratio was that low was 2015.
2025-12-04 13:00:12
I spent four years in Belgium when I was supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is a complicated nation, split in two by religion and language. My military headquarters was at Mons, in the French-speaking, largely Catholic South rather than the Dutch-speaking, Protestant North. The cosmopolitan capital, Brussels, hosts the overall headquarters of both NATO and the European Union.
2025-12-04 12:30:12
The ranks, past and present, of Glencore Plc are full of billionaires and multimillionaires. They clearly know how to make money for themselves. Problem is, they haven’t made so much for their institutional shareholders.
2025-12-04 12:00:15
Central banks avoided disaster on climbing down from high rates, but emerging markets did it best.
2025-12-04 12:00:12
The European Union doesn’t have much to brag about these days. Its own officials admit its penchant for red tape looks more like a burden than a benefit. Yet if the old label of “regulatory superpower” is out, the moniker of “lifestyle superpower” is definitely in. “Europe has created a lifestyle...It’s a superpower with the highest living and social standards in the world,” EU Commissioner for International Partnerships Jozef Sikela said in July.
2025-12-04 07:17:57
China is remaking Asia’s security map, but not in the way it intends. From water cannon confrontations in the South China Sea to increasingly sharp rhetoric around Taiwan, Beijing’s behavior is driving its neighbors to welcome something once unthinkable: a larger security role for Japan.
