The city was portrayed as an aspirational place to live, but now those who moved there are realising the precarity that comes with being an economic migrant

To be fooled by a mirage, you needn’t be lost in the desert. Sometimes, the illusion is strongest just when you thought you were safely home, posting from the pool about your teenage daughter’s spa party and your own glittering life in a city where “the possibilities are endless”, as they tend to be for billionaires’ daughters living in tax havens. Only then does the fantasy explode in a puff of intercepted missile smoke, leaving just another woman in her pyjamas telling Instagram (as Petra Ecclestone did at the weekend) that she moved to Dubai “to feel safe” and war was never mentioned in the small print.

Who could have guessed that living a few hundred miles as the drone flies from Tehran might have risks? Certainly not the anonymous hedge funder who fumed to the Financial Times that “the trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics”.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA

© Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA

© Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA

Insider says demand is far outstripping supply and calls for creation of air bridges to evacuate people from Middle East

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Planes are always urgently sought out when a crisis strikes somewhere in the world. Since the US-Israel war against Iran started on Saturday, demand has outstripped supply with thousands of people stranded in the Middle East frantically searching for an exit route.

While many are reliant on governments to dispatch aircraft to evacuate them, those with the financial means can look at a more expensive and much speedier option – a private jet. Matt Purton, the director of aviation services at UK-based global company Air Charter Service, is the man some of them have on speed dial.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Raghed Waked/Reuters

© Photograph: Raghed Waked/Reuters

© Photograph: Raghed Waked/Reuters

Friedrich Merz has called for greater European unity, but he did not publicly object to the president rebuking Spain and Britain during an Oval Office meeting.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

Olivier De Schutter says new economic agenda needed to tackle crises of rising inequality and ecological collapse

The global economy must be reordered to ensure it serves ordinary people around the world rather than the “frivolous and destructive demands of the ultra-rich”, according to a leading UN figure.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, says politicians must stop prioritising “socially and ecologically destructive growth” that only increases the profits – and serves the consumption demands – of the world’s richest individuals and corporations.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

© Photograph: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

© Photograph: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

Johannes Lochner hat sich nach dem Erfolg im Zweierbob auch Gold im Viererbob gesichert. Silber ging seinen Dauerrivalen Francesco Friedrich. Der Schweizer Vogt holte Bronze.

HMRC figures show 11% rise in young million-pound earners, with influencers and tech pay cited as key

Their generation is often derided for being work-shy, self-centred and overly sensitive. But when it comes to making money, people under 30 are proving they are something else entirely: successful.

A record 1,000 taxpayers under 30 earned more than £1m last year, an 11% increase on the year before, HMRC records show.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

With their profile and vile words, these malign provocateurs are tearing down decency’s guardrails

It lacks the elegance of “greed is good”, but as a distillation of the spirit of the age, it’s right up there. “I feel liberated,” a top banker told the Financial Times shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled … it’s a new dawn.”

So that’s what they meant by “vibe shift”. Though, as the Epstein files reveal daily, the top 0.01% were hardly primly biting their tongues before Trump’s win, at least not in private. Those with telephone-number fortunes and great power felt able to speak, and write, to each other about women in language so vicious, so filled with hate – women discussed as body parts, as “less than human”, in Gordon Brown’s apt phrase – that they didn’t need the encouragement of a “grab ’em by the pussy” president to cast off their inhibitions.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images

© Photograph: Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images

© Photograph: Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images

Bankers and billionaires are flocking to the city where income tax is zero but critics say it ignores money laundering – and pay disparities are huge

• Business live – latest updates

Aidan Doyle was an estate agent in Liverpool before he decamped to Dubai and turned a £30,000 annual income into £500,000 a year and climbing.

Acting as an agent for buyers and sellers, Doyle has seen his commission soar beyond anything he could hope to generate in the UK after just three years in the city, one of seven city-states in the United Arab Emirates.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Captured Blinks Photography/Getty

© Photograph: Captured Blinks Photography/Getty

© Photograph: Captured Blinks Photography/Getty

Billionaires and intellectuals attended events with the disgraced financier years after he served time for sex offense, files reveal

Newly released emails and travel itineraries appear to show that for years after Jeffrey Epstein served time for procuring underage girls for prostitution, he continued to attend exclusive dinners alongside Silicon Valley’s most famous billionaires.

The emails, part of a trove released by the Department of Justice on Friday, show that as late as 2018, Epstein was invited to or attended dinners alongside the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Google vice-president and later Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: House Oversight Committee Democrats/Reuters

© Photograph: House Oversight Committee Democrats/Reuters

© Photograph: House Oversight Committee Democrats/Reuters

Harry Styles is highest-contributing celebrity and Erling Haaland the youngest entry in Sunday Times tax list

Tim Martin, Harry Styles, Ed Sheeran, Erling Haaland and Mo Salah are among the UK’s 100 biggest taxpayers, according to new rankings.

The billionaire brothers behind the gambling firm Betfred topped the Sunday Times 2026 tax List. Fred and Peter Done paid £400.1m in tax, about half of which relates to gambling duty from their betting shop empire.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images/Reuters

© Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images/Reuters

© Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images/Reuters

Seit vier Wochen kämpfen die Ärzte darum, dass die teils schwerst verletzten Brandopfer von Crans-Montana überleben. In einem Fall haben sie den Kampf nun verloren.

Speaking in Davos, Chancellor Friedrich Merz also implicitly criticized President Trump’s demeaning treatment of European allies.

© Markus Schreiber/Associated Press

Mark Ruffalo, Brian Eno and Abigail Disney sign letter timed for WEF in Davos saying wealthy are buying political influence

Nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires from 24 countries are calling on global leaders to increase taxes on the super-rich, amid growing concern that the wealthiest in society are buying political influence.

An open letter, released to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, calls on global leaders attending this week’s conference to close the widening gap between the super-rich and everyone else.

Continue reading...

© Composite: Getty images/The Guardian

© Composite: Getty images/The Guardian

© Composite: Getty images/The Guardian

With cameras rolling, President Trump met with more than 40 international leaders in his first year back in office.

© Eric Lee/The New York Times

Economic inequality is at the heart of all humanity’s major problems, but the wealthiest refuse to confront a system that benefits them

This week, hundreds of government leaders, heads of state, and business executives are gathering at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. They will be discussing solutions to the world’s biggest risks and problems.

But everything suggests that, once more, what will not be addressed at their meeting is the biggest threat to humanity and the planet: neoliberal capitalism.

Ingrid Robeyns is an economist and philosopher, and holds the chair in ethics of institutions at Utrecht University. Her most recent book is Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Michael Buholzer/EPA

© Photograph: Michael Buholzer/EPA

© Photograph: Michael Buholzer/EPA

Diese Woche trifft sich die globale Geld-Elite beim Weltwirtschaftsforum. Auch Donald Trump kommt persönlich vorbei und mit ihm die Aussicht auf eine neue Eskalationsstufe der Weltpolitik – sei es in Grönland, in der Ukraine oder in Iran.

There are many excuses for failing to tax the ultra-wealthy. The truth is that governments don’t tackle the problem because they don’t want to

There is one political problem from which all others follow. It is the major cause of Donald Trump, of Nigel Farage, of the shocking weakness of their opponents, of the polarisation tearing societies apart, of the devastation of the living world. It is simply stated: the extreme wealth of a small number of people.

It can also be quantified. The World Inequality Report (WIR) 2026 shows that about 56,000 people – 0.001% of the global population – corral three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. They afflict almost every country. In the UK, for example, 50 families hold more wealth than 50% of the population combined.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Getty Images

© Photograph: Getty Images

© Photograph: Getty Images

Richest 1% took 10 days while wealthiest 0.1% needed just three days to exhaust annual carbon budget, study shows

The world’s richest 1% have used up their fair share of carbon emissions just 10 days into 2026, analysis has found.

Meanwhile, the richest 0.1% took just three days to exhaust their annual carbon budget, according to the research by Oxfam.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP

© Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP

© Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP

State residents worth more than $1bn could face one-off, 5% tax to help fund education, food assistance and healthcare

A battle is brewing in California over a plan to tax billionaires – with tech titans divided over whether they should pay up, or flee the state.

Under a tax proposal that could be put to voters this November, any California resident worth more than $1bn would have to pay a one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters

© Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters

© Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters

Just eight billionaires accounted for a quarter of the gains, led by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Larry Page

The richest 500 individuals in the world added a record $2.2tn to their wealth in 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with just eight billionaires accounting for a quarter of the gains.

The gains increased their collective net worth to $11.9tn, bolstered by billionaire Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory and booming markets in cryptocurrencies, equities and metals.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Melissa Bender/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Melissa Bender/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Melissa Bender/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock