Super-rich UK energy and food magnates’ wealth skyrockets amid global crises

30. September 2026 um 10:00

Analysis has shown the costs of daily essentials soaring in recent years, thanks in part to climate shocks, wars and geopolitical tensions

François Perrodo is what is known in motorsport as a gentleman driver. In June, he raced at Le Mans, earning a podium place. At the end of August he was back behind the wheel at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. This time he won.

Gentleman drivers are wealthy individuals who fund their own participation. The FIA governing body caps costs to keep racing accessible to such enthusiasts. But for self-confessed petrolhead Perrodo, it is well within his means.

‘It’s unrecognisable’: How being a tax haven has changed Jersey

The Guardian

Von: Kalyeena Makortoff in Jersey

21. September 2026 um 05:00

While global billionaires and multinational companies have been lured to its shores, many islanders feel left behind and priced out, with food bank use increasing

On a late Friday afternoon on the Channel Island of Jersey, tourists and locals are flocking to St Helier’s waterfront where the town’s sprawling beach has emerged at low tide.

In one direction, they face the calm waters of St Aubin’s Bay, ringed by a seaside promenade and punctuated with a tidal island hosting the 16th century Elizabeth Castle.

‘People are pissed off’: anger at the elite and the establishment is fueling this year’s midterms

The Guardian

Von: Rachel Leingang

20. September 2026 um 11:00

Coming midterm elections are starting to be framed not as right versus left but instead the ‘well-fed versus the fed-up’

Brian Leeland, a 79-year-old Democratic voter in Detroit, had enough. Frustrated by the way the US media covers this febrile political era, from Donald Trump’s Washington to political campaigns across the country, he contacted the Guardian.

“Your decision to frame the race here as a simple progressive versus establishment choice is overly simplistic verging on lazy,” he wrote to this reporter, after our coverage of progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan. “As an electorate, we are not binary for the convenience of the media.”

Private jets pollute up to 14 times as much as commercial planes and are undertaxed in US, report says

The Guardian

Von: Marina Dunbar

18. September 2026 um 13:00

Number of private jets has surged in recent years, but they do not pay commensurate portion of fees to FAA operations

A new report has put a spotlight on the rapid expansion of private jet travel in the US, revealing that owners are not paying their fair share of aviation tax despite the average owner’s wealth being $190m and private jets being up to 14 times more polluting than commercial flights.

The Institute for Policy Studies’ new report, High Flyers 2026, examines the growing use of private aircraft, the public infrastructure supporting them and the tax policies benefiting private jet owners.

Are we living in the End Times? With Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor – Stateside with Kai and Carter

The Guardian

Von: Hosted by Carter Sherman with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor . Produced by Monica Espitia engineered by Ivan Kuraev executive producer Rachel Humphreys

17. September 2026 um 10:45

In a new book, writers Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have created a term to define the era we are living in: End Times Fascism. A response to the climate crisis, the rise of the far-right and advancing AI technology, they spell out how the damage being wrought by the super-rich is becoming normalized. Klein and Taylor join Carter Sherman to talk about the recent events that have made us all feel like we’re hurtling towards the apocalypse, and how we can fight back through ‘hereness’.

End Times Fascism And The Fight For The Living World is out now.

Union leaders resist political donations cap after Reform given £72m

The Guardian

Von: Jessica Elgot Deputy political editor

15. September 2026 um 13:47

General secretaries say union funding is ‘cleanest money in politics’ and different to that from wealthy individual donors

UK politics live – latest updates

Trade unions have stopped short of backing a cap on political donations but called for further action on big money in politics, in a joint statement after Reform UK was given an unprecedented £72m from two donors.

General secretaries have been split on a call for unions to back a specific cap on individual donors to political parties while protecting trade union donations, which the TUC said were the “cleanest money in politics” because it came from workers’ subscriptions.

The AfD won a shock election in Germany. Elon Musk was thrilled

The Guardian

Von: Nick Robins-Early

13. September 2026 um 07:00

The billionaire and the party have developed a symbiotic relationship to spread their far-right views both in Germany and the US

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party rattled European politics this week after a convincing victory in a German state election, which placed it only a few seats away from forming the country’s first state-level far right government since the second world war.

Elon Musk was thrilled.

Trade unions, MPs and donors urge Burnham to revisit party funding rules

The Guardian

Von: Jessica Elgot Deputy political editor

13. September 2026 um 18:50

PM has so far declined to insert curbs on UK-based donors, despite £72m donations from billionaires to Reform UK

Trade unions, MPs and donors have urged the government to look again at party funding rules, after Reform UK insisted £72m in donations from two crypto billionaires was within the law.

Andy Burnham, a previous backer of caps on domestic donations, has so far declined to insert any curbs in the elections bill that would apply to UK-based donors.

Burning Man at 40: the once anarchic desert festival faces a midlife crisis

The Guardian

Von: Lois Beckett

13. September 2026 um 14:00

The subversive bacchanal for San Francisco’s eccentric underground is ageing out amid an influx of the super-rich

Burning Man, the infamous arts festival in the Nevada desert, turned 40 this year, and it’s showing some distinct signs of middle age.

It’s not just the tech billionaires who show up to party, the chartered flights straight to the desert or the HBO documentary about behind-the-scenes power struggles. The tens of thousands of people who assemble each year to create a tent city in the wilderness appear to be growing older, and it doesn’t seem that they’re being replaced by as many younger “burners”, as festival participants are called.

Reform UK given record £36m donation by British crypto billionaire

The Guardian

Von: Rowena Mason Whitehall editor

11. September 2026 um 23:00

Ben Delo was convicted in US for failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering controls but pardoned by Trump

Reform UK has been given a record £36m donation by Ben Delo, a British cryptocurrency billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering controls.

The businessman, who has moved back to the UK from Hong Kong, is now the biggest UK political donor by far, dwarfing the £15m contribution to Reform UK from Thailand-based Christopher Harborne.

Billionaire Chris Rokos, who paid £330m in tax last year, to quit UK

The Guardian

Von: Lauren Almeida

08. September 2026 um 08:44

Hedge fund tycoon is latest financier to exit amid fears among super-rich over tax rises

Business live – latest updates

The hedge fund billionaire Chris Rokos is poised to leave the UK, the latest in a string of high-profile exits among Britain’s super-rich.

The founder of Rokos Capital Management is preparing to move his residency to Greece, and will open an office in Athens as part of the move, according to Bloomberg.

Schauspielerin Luna Wedler im Porträt: Die vielen Gesichter einer jungen Frau

Bayern - SZ.de

Von: Von Josef Grübl

07. September 2026 um 13:02

Luna Wedler ist erst 26 Jahre alt, aber bereits ein alter Hase im Filmgeschäft. Derzeit erhält sie einen Preis nach dem anderen. Was macht die Schauspielerin aus der Schweiz aus? Eine Begegnung in Starnberg.

Founder of China’s Evergrande jailed for life after pleading guilty to fraud

The Guardian

Von: Amy Hawkins Senior China correspondent

20. August 2026 um 13:03

Hui Ka Yan also forfeits all his personal property and the company he set up is given hefty fines

Business live – latest updates

The founder of Evergrande, one of China’s largest property developers, has been sentenced to life in prison and had all of his personal property confiscated.

Hui Ka Yan, 67 and once named by Forbes as China’s richest man, with a net worth of $42.5bn (£31.2bn) in 2017, pleaded guilty in April to eight charges.

Relax, everyone: Elon Musk has a mantra to make the climate crisis go away | Emma Brockes

The Guardian

Von: Emma Brockes

20. August 2026 um 08:00

It’s simple, says the SpaceX boss – according to something called the ‘Kardashev scale’, we just have to move energy production ‘off-planet’

Next time the weather gives the UK 61 days without rain and we wonder idly if this is the end, there is a term we may whistle up to soothe us. Like murmuring the rosary, or putting our fingers in our ears and humming, this phrase is to be mumbled on repeat – “the Kardashev scale, the Kardashev scale” – a buzzy concept in tech, much favoured by Elon Musk, and precisely the thing we’ve been waiting for. The Kardashev scale is the answer both to our impending doom and our anxiety around it – and if we decide to believe in it, we won’t have to give the climate crisis a single thought until the last drip falls from the tap.

This is the idea and it’s a familiar one to anyone who has watched tech billionaires take intractable, commonplace crises and decide that, among the measures and proposals in play, the vital missing ingredient so far has been them. Do you remember when Jeff Bezos, rather than doing something quotidian and loserish like funding public education by ensuring Amazon pays the same tax rate as regular Americans, decided instead to reinvent preschools?

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Sachsen-Anhalts "Bedeutung nicht zu unterschätzen"

ZDFheute

20. August 2026 um 06:34

In Sachsen-Anhalt steht die Landtagswahl bevor. Welche Bedeutung sie hat, welche Rolle die AfD spielt und warum Menschen sie wählen, erklärt Sozialwissenschaftler David Begrich.

Judge Allows Limited Testing in Trump Plan to Paint Eisenhower Building White

NYT > U.S. News

Von: Zach Montague

18. August 2026 um 20:12

A federal judge ruled that initial preparatory steps, including testing out paints on the building’s gray granite exterior, could proceed for now.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building in May.

Ex-Official at Southern Poverty Law Center Accused of Plotting to Misuse Far-Right Informants

NYT > U.S. News

Von: Alan Feuer

12. August 2026 um 21:53

The charges signaled an escalation of the Justice Department’s prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is best known for investigating white supremacist groups.

The headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. The Trump administration and its allies have for years criticized the law center’s efforts to document and expose the inner workings of far-right organizations.

Hotel Adlon: Ein Mythos steht zum Verkauf

Wirtschaft - SZ.de

Von: Von Caspar Busse und Sonja Salzburger

07. August 2026 um 12:24

Hier steigen Staatsgäste und Stars ab: Das Hotel Adlon ist die wohl berühmteste Herberge Deutschlands. Nun soll die Immobilie auf den Markt kommen. Aber wer soll sie kaufen?

‘If we don’t fight back, we don’t have a future’: the journalist taking on the ‘tech fascists’ of Silicon Valley

The Guardian

Von: Steve Rose

05. August 2026 um 10:00

As Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their peers have grown richer and more influential, Gil Durán argues they have all but abandoned democracy – and found the perfect government to enable them

In April, Gil Durán was permanently banned from Elon Musk’s X for posting just two words. Durán was responding to a post from the tech company Palantir outlining its 22‑point “technological manifesto”, which praised American “hard power”, western culture and AI weapons, denounced inclusivity and called for compulsory national service. Durán responded: “TLDR: Fascism” (TLDR is short for “too long, didn’t read”).

Durán didn’t break any of X’s written rules, he points out over a video call from San Francisco – so much for Musk’s “free-speech absolutism”. His ban might just have had something to do with his preceding tweet, showing the cover of his new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. The book’s central argument is that big tech is no longer our friend, as many of its billionaire owners have seized economic and political control and are steering the fate of the planet towards their own bizarre, apocalyptic visions.