A look at the most basic numbers might have you believe that the Champions League finalists have had equally demanding campaigns. The final in Budapest on Saturday will be the 63rd game of the season for Arsenal and the 56th for Paris Saint-Germain. However, the French side also played seven matches at last summer’s Club World Cup, which means both teams have played 62 matches since the start of l...
A look at the most basic numbers might have you believe that the Champions League finalists have had equally demanding campaigns. The final in Budapest on Saturday will be the 63rd game of the season for Arsenal and the 56th for Paris Saint-Germain. However, the French side also played seven matches at last summer’s Club World Cup, which means both teams have played 62 matches since the start of last June. Delve a little deeper, though, and there is more to those figures than meets the eye. While Arsenal were able to rest properly last summer, PSG were in the US, reaching the final of a competition played in sweltering heat, which started only 14 days after they had beaten Inter in the Champions League final. They had barely any time off to rest after it, either, because their season started exactly one month after the Club World Cup had ended, with the Super Cup against Tottenham. And their defence of the Ligue 1 title began just a few days later. The newly expanded Club World Cup set up the teams involved for a difficult season, where their players were forced to play catchup on their rivals when it came to rest and recuperation. There is no way of quantifying how much Chelsea’s players were affected by their run to the final, but it is no coincidence that they only won two of their first six league games of the season and went on to finish way down in 10th. Cole Palmer, for one, had such a disappointing campaign that he will not even be at this summer’s World Cup as a result. But, since the new season started, there is no comparison between the demands on PSG’s players and those on Arsenal’s. From the beginning of the 2025-26 campaign, Arsenal have played more matches than any other team in any of the top five European leagues, having gone deep in the League Cup and the FA Cup. And, crucially, their opportunities to rotate have, unlike PSG, been few and far between. For example, when PSG’s domestic season started against Nantes, their team contained just two of t...
I used to love a heatwave. I was the sort of British person who acted like I was in the Mediterranean if the sun was slightly visible, coercing friends to take the outside restaurant table and eagerly working in the garden until my MacBook started to overheat rather than my internal organs. That was until I developed post-viral fatigue from the flu nine years ago. Now, the heat means suffering rat...
I used to love a heatwave. I was the sort of British person who acted like I was in the Mediterranean if the sun was slightly visible, coercing friends to take the outside restaurant table and eagerly working in the garden until my MacBook started to overheat rather than my internal organs. That was until I developed post-viral fatigue from the flu nine years ago. Now, the heat means suffering rather than pleasure: less energy, more pain and worse breathing. This has only increased as heatwaves across Europe have soared. I have spent this week of record-high May temperatures in the UK largely in bed, with the blinds drawn and two 5ft-high fans looming over me like security guards at a club no one wants to get into. Click on a news site in recent days and you’ll have seen headlines about how air conditioning (AC) is becoming Britain’s go-to tool to beat the heat. Four million households in the UK now have AC of some sort – double the amount there were just three years ago – as more of us work from home and temperatures rise. And yet there is a fact that many have not yet wrestled with: the millions of homes now enjoying air conditioning don’t house most of the people who really need it. While the wealthy and healthy can find tens of thousands of pounds to kit out their houses with built-in AC systems, disabled and chronically ill people – who are disproportionately on low wages or out of work long term – must make do with an Argos fan. Even the lower-cost portable AC units, which cost hundreds of pounds, are out of reach to many people relying solely on disability benefits. And then there are the swathes of disabled people who rent (if you have a disability, you’re less likely to own your own home) who won’t have the right to upgrade their properties. It’s the British class system with a climate-crisis spin: the more someone requires air conditioning to survive heatwaves, the less likely they are to be able to afford it. The situation will only get tougher as demand ...
“Geopolitical conflicts continue to flare up, development gaps are widening and global challenges are emerging one after another,” Han said. “These developments have made reform and improvement of global governance an urgent task for all countries and peoples.” The Global Governance Initiative – unveiled during the Tianjin Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation last September – was China’...
“Geopolitical conflicts continue to flare up, development gaps are widening and global challenges are emerging one after another,” Han said. “These developments have made reform and improvement of global governance an urgent task for all countries and peoples.” The Global Governance Initiative – unveiled during the Tianjin Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation last September – was China’s response to the needs of the world, Han said, as he outlined its three key messages: strong solidarity, upholding multilateralism, and a future of fairness and justice. “Hong Kong, as an international metropolis connecting China and the world and bringing together Eastern and Western cultures, is not only a major hub for finance, trade and shipping, but also an important bridge for exchanges between civilisations,” he said. Ambassador Han Zhiqiang, vice-president of the China Public Diplomacy Association, outlined Hong Kong’s key role in facilitating international exchanges in his keynote address, where he laid out the vision of China’s Global Governance Initiative. The two-day event, which ran from May 19 to 20, brought together global leaders and renowned experts in Hong Kong to exchange insights on issues affecting the city’s future and global prosperity. The Global Prosperity Summit 2026 (GPS 2026) highlighted Hong Kong’s expanding role in international and regional cooperation both within China’s Global Governance Initiative as well as Apec, ahead of a meeting of the bloc’s economic leaders in neighbouring Shenzhen later this year. “As we all advance towards a brighter future of a community with a shared future for humanity, China is ready to work with the international community to ensure that the Initiative takes root and yields fruitful outcomes.” Marking its third consecutive edition, GPS 2026 was co-organised by the Savantas Policy Institute, the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies and the European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. Advertisement The As...
The Iran war may push medium-term inflation expectations among euro-area consumers higher, according to a European Central Bank blog post that appears to underpin the case for hiking interest rates. The chances that households will anticipate more rapid increases in prices have also increased after the 2022 price spike that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and earlier geopolitical tensions le...
The Iran war may push medium-term inflation expectations among euro-area consumers higher, according to a European Central Bank blog post that appears to underpin the case for hiking interest rates. The chances that households will anticipate more rapid increases in prices have also increased after the 2022 price spike that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and earlier geopolitical tensions left a “double scar,” Friday’s post said. Policymakers are particularly attentive to such expectations as they look to prevent the war-induced surge in energy costs from spilling over into broader inflation through wages and corporate price-setting. While short-term price outlooks have already risen significantly , movements in the medium to longer term have been smaller. Officials are widely expected to raise borrowing costs by a quarter-point in two weeks, with euro-area inflation already at 3% and likely to quicken further. “When looking ahead, consumers tend to extrapolate from their short-term to their medium-term inflation expectations, and they may have yet to witness the full pass-through to prices at the retail level,” Friday’s blog said. “As a result, there is certainly a risk of further upward revisions in medium-run inflation expectations in the future.” Adding to that, memories of 2022’s surge in prices and prolonged effects of geopolitical shocks “may reinforce each other,” the authors Olivier Coibion, Dimitris Georgarakos, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Geoff Kenny, Justus Meyer and Trixi Pairan wrote. While the “the general shift towards a more stagflationary outlook is, so far, somewhat less pronounced” than four years ago, they cautioned that current data “provide only a snapshot.” With consumers highly attentive to economic news, “the evidence suggests that trust in the ECB acts as a buffer against the de-anchoring of inflation expectations,” the post argued. “Maintaining credibility and effective communication therefore remain essential, especially in volatile macro...
David Trainer, CEO of research firm New Constructs, is taking a highly contrarian view of the looming SpaceX IPO that’s generating more excitement than any debut in stock market history. And that’s across the spectrum, from institutions anticipating their biggest payday ever from underwriting the shares, to the funds clamoring to get the way-underpriced allocations that should “pop” big the first ...
David Trainer, CEO of research firm New Constructs, is taking a highly contrarian view of the looming SpaceX IPO that’s generating more excitement than any debut in stock market history. And that’s across the spectrum, from institutions anticipating their biggest payday ever from underwriting the shares, to the funds clamoring to get the way-underpriced allocations that should “pop” big the first day of trading, to the Elon Musk fans clamoring to pile in after the bell rings at the Nasdaq market site, probably in mid-June. Trainer’s got a different take: SpaceX is really skewering investors by raising tens of billions that instead of building profits will going to paying down debt, and “fund an increasingly costly AI race” that SpaceX claims it will totally dominate while in fact, it will encounter powerful competition, and intense pricing pressure, from the likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Put simply, Trainer brands SpaceX projected valuation of $1.75 trillion market cap, biggest by far for any post-offering number of all-time, as “truly out of this world,” and instructs folks and fund to stay away from an investment that the basic math stamps as beyond lousy. Trainer argues that the SpaceX S-1 registration statement exposes a litany of weaknesses. Here are four of central issues he identified in a recent critique titled “Going Boldly Where No One Has Gone Before,” a surprisingly mild-sounding headline that, once you read the report, might better read “going recklessly.” Bad Corporate Governance Trainer argues correctly that the investors who are expected to buy $80 billion in SpaceX shares in the IPO will get exert zero influence over how the enterprise is run. Instead, Elon Musk will hold all the power. The rules are so one-sided that a group of America’s largest pension funds, including CalPERS, and those headed by the Controllers of both New York State and City, filed a lengthy letter objecting to half-a-dozen of the provisions. As Joseph Lucoski, founder...
An annual United Nations report documenting sexual violence in conflicts worldwide has included Israeli forces for the first time since the review began more than 15 years ago for their treatment of Palestinian detainees. Israel denies the accusations. The 35-page report – shared by the Israeli mission to the UN late Thursday ahead of its expected release on Friday – blacklists 77 government and n...
An annual United Nations report documenting sexual violence in conflicts worldwide has included Israeli forces for the first time since the review began more than 15 years ago for their treatment of Palestinian detainees. Israel denies the accusations. The 35-page report – shared by the Israeli mission to the UN late Thursday ahead of its expected release on Friday – blacklists 77 government and non-government parties in a dozen countries suspected of committing or being responsible for sexual violence in conflicts around the world. It says the number of cases rose sharply in 2025 from 2024. Russian armed and security forces were also blacklisted for the first time this year for sexual violence against prisoners of war and civilians detained during the war in Ukraine. Advertisement The list for 2025 includes Israel’s armed and security forces as well as Hamas militants, who were previously blacklisted after their attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza. Both Israel and Russia were warned in last year’s report by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that they could be put on the list. Advertisement The ambassadors of both countries expressed outrage at their inclusion and lashed out at Guterres.
Kagenmi/iStock via Getty Images France’s economy contracted by 0.1% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2026, according to revised data released Friday. The finalized reading marks a downward revision from preliminary estimates of a flat (0.0%) performance and reverses a 0.2% expansion recorded in the fourth quarter of 2025. This downturn represents the French economy's first quarterly cont...
Kagenmi/iStock via Getty Images France’s economy contracted by 0.1% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2026, according to revised data released Friday. The finalized reading marks a downward revision from preliminary estimates of a flat (0.0%) performance and reverses a 0.2% expansion recorded in the fourth quarter of 2025. This downturn represents the French economy's first quarterly contraction in over a year, heavily dragged down by a sharp drop in net foreign trade as import volumes outpaced sluggish export demand. More on iShares MSCI France ETF EWQ: France An Excellent Diversifier, Here's Why U.S. Tariffs: A New Trade War? Norway to join France's nuclear deterrence initiative European stocks fall; French PPI jumps and Spanish retail sales rise Seeking Alpha’s Quant Rating on iShares MSCI France ETF