News

Week Ahead: a run of elections while the WTO gathers in Abu Dhabi

Published

2 years ago

February 25, 2024

Week Ahead: a run of elections while the WTO gathers in Abu Dhabi

This article is an on-site version of our The Week Ahead newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox every Sunday

Hello and welcome to the working week.

2024 is the year of elections and the next seven days offer us a rich crop of voting, with varying degrees of legitimacy.

On Tuesday, Israelis go to the polls for local elections. The US presidential election primary roadshow has pitched up in Michigan and later that day the voting begins. You can read more about this and other twists and turns in the Republican and Democrat campaigns from the Financial Times’s Washington reporter Steff Chávez in the US Election Countdown newsletter.

Iranians will also elect new representatives in their parliament on Friday.

The day before that brings another British by-election in a seat previously held by a Conservative. This one is different, however. The campaign to be the new representative of the north-west English mill town of Rochdale has become one of the most toxic in modern British political history. The all-male list from which voters will choose features two candidates ditched by their respective parties because of comments about Israel and Palestine, one sacked previously by Labour for sending sexually explicit photos to a teenager, and the firebrand George Galloway. Our UK news team will have full coverage as the result arrives.

Another evolving UK news story has been the Post Office IT scandal, and this Tuesday MPs will take evidence from former Post Office chair Henry Staunton, current chief executive Nick Read and former sub-postmasters, including campaigner Alan Bates.

This is also the week of the WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi. My colleague Alan Beattie will be providing insights in his latest Trade Secrets newsletter (for premium subscribers), out tomorrow. The death of global trade owing to the rise of populism and geopolitical shifts has been greatly exaggerated, but some roadblocks will definitely not get fixed this week, according to Alan. Sign up here to get Trade Secrets in your inbox each Monday.

We are approaching the end of the corporate reporting season, but you can expect a trickle of results with construction and food as the biggest themes, plus multiple central banker speeches. Another theme for this week is industry conferences with the annual mobile telecoms industry gathering at MWC in Barcelona and the Geneva International Motor Show.

One more thing . . .

Some good news for at least the top half of the planet this week: meteorological spring is coming. And we will be getting an extra day to do something with given it’s a leap year.

This could be an ideal time to book a spring break — mine is going to be a long weekend in the delightful English county of Suffolk. But don’t just take my word for it, read the HTSI holiday guide.

What are your plans for the next seven days, and what do you think is worth highlighting? Email me at jonathan.moules@ft.com or, if you are reading this in your inbox, hit reply.

Key economic and company reports

Here is a more complete list of what to expect in terms of company reports and economic data this week.

Monday

Bank of England deputy governor Sarah Breeden opens the Bank of England Agenda for Research (BEAR) conference in London. Keynote speakers include Bo Becker, a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, and Juliane Begenau, associate professor of finance at Stanford University.
Israel: interest rate announcement
Spain: MWC Barcelona, the world’s largest event for the mobile telecommunications industry, begins. Speakers include Vodafone chief executive Margherita Della Valle and Dell Technologies chair and CEO Michael Dell.
Switzerland: the 2024 Geneva International Motor Show opens, running until the weekend.
US: new home sales figures
Results: Bank of Ireland FY, Bunzl FY, Domino’s Pizza Q4, Fidelity National Information Q4, SBA Communications Q4, Zoom Q4

Tuesday

Bank of England deputy governor David Ramsden speaks at AFME Bond Trading, Innovation and Evolution Forum in London.
Germany: GfK Consumer Climate survey
Israel: local elections. Public holiday and financial markets closed.
Japan: February consumer price index (CPI) inflation rate data
UK: British Retail Consortium’s February Shop Price Index
US: January durable goods orders data
Results: Abrdn FY, AES Corp Q4, Agilent Technologies Q1, ASM International Q4, Bouygues FY, Coface FY, eBay Q4, Lowe’s Cos Q4, Smith & Nephew FY, Unite Group FY, Woodside Energy FY

Wednesday

Bank of England monetary policy committee member Catherine Mann speaks at the FT’s Future Forum online event.
FT Live Business of Football online conference kicks off.
Australia: January CPI inflation rate data
Germany: monthly retail sales figures
Hong Kong: financial secretary Paul Chan Mo-po presents the 2024-25 Budget to the Legislative Council.
New Zealand: RBNZ official cash rate decision
US: revised Q4 GDP growth figures
Results: Aston Martin Lagonda FY, Groupe Casino FY, Co-operative Bank FY, HP Q1, Just Eat Takeaway.com FY, Paramount Global Q4, Reckitt Benckiser FY, Salesforce Q4, St James’s Place FY, Taylor Wimpey FY, TJX Q4, Universal Health Services Q4, Universal Music Group Q4

Thursday

China: NBS manufacturing and non-manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data
France: Q4 GDP figures, plus February CPI and harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) inflation rate data.
Germany: February unemployment figures, plus CPI and HICP inflation rate data.
India: Q3 GDP figures
US: January personal spending and PCE price index data.
Results: Adecco FY, Air France-KLM FY, Anheuser-Busch InBev FY, CVS Group HY, Getlink FY, Haleon FY, Hammerson FY, IAG FY, London Stock Exchange Group FY, Man Group FY, Mobico FY, Ocado FY, Schroders FY, Serco FY, Weir Group FY

Friday

Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill speaks at Cardiff University Business School.
Adriana Kugler, member of Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Ford Motor Company chief executive Jim Farley, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speak at Stanford University’s SIEPR Economic Summit.
Takeover Panel deadline for Julian Dunkerton to either announce a firm intention to bid for Superdry or say he does not intend to make an offer.
Brazil: Q4 GDP figures
Canada, China, EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US: S&P Global/Caixin/HCOB manufacturing PMI data
EU: Core February CPI and HICP inflation rate data
South Korea: Independence Movement Day. Financial markets closed.
UK: Bank of England publishes statistics for Q4 on external business of monetary financial institutions operating in the UK. Also, February Nationwide House Price Index.
US: University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey
Results: Pearson FY, Rightmove FY

World events

Finally, here is a rundown of other events and milestones this week.

Monday

Hungary: National Assembly votes to ratify Sweden’s bid to join Nato with the vote expected to pass.
Kenya: sixth session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) opens at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, running until Friday.
UAE: WTO Ministerial Conference begins in Abu Dhabi, running until Thursday.
Ukraine: Day of resistance to the occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol by Russia in 2014.

Tuesday

Brazil: first Brics finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in São Paulo.
UK: Former Post Office chair Henry Staunton, current chief executive Nick Read and former sub-postmasters, including campaigner Alan Bates, will give evidence to MPs on progress on redress to the Horizon IT scandal victims.
US: Michigan presidential primary elections.

Wednesday

Brazil: G20 finance ministers meet in São Paulo to prepare for the annual presidential summit in November.
UK: campaign group Liberty begins a legal challenge at London’s High Court over new police powers that broaden the definition under English Law of “serious disruption” in relation to peaceful protests.

Thursday

Leap Day adds an extra date to the month of February to accommodate the leap year in the Gregorian calendar.
UK: Rochdale by-election. Also, Keir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin is published by William Collins.

Friday

70th anniversary of the first hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
40th anniversary of the UK’s National Coal Board announcing the closure of Cortonwood Colliery in South Yorkshire, triggering the 1984 miners’ strike.
First day of meteorological spring.
The UN Security Council monthly presidency rotates from Guyana to Japan.
Iran: parliamentary elections.
UK: St David’s Day, celebrating the patron saint of Wales.
US: latest deadline for a new funding deal to avert a partial government shutdown in Washington. Also, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter is to appear for a deposition with House Republicans for their impeachment inquiry into his father.

Saturday

Sunday

100th anniversary of the Ottoman Empire ending.
El Salvador: municipal elections.
UK: annual rail fares increase comes into force.

Recommended newsletters for you

One Must-Read — The one piece of journalism you should read today. Sign up here

Working It — Discover the big ideas shaping today’s workplaces with a weekly newsletter from work & careers editor Isabel Berwick. Sign up here

News

Court restricts abortion access across the US by blocking the mailing of mifepristone

Published

2 hours ago

May 1, 2026

Press Room

Court restricts abortion access across the US by blocking the mailing of mifepristone

Mifepristone tablets sit on a table at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Ames, Iowa, on July 18, 2024.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Charlie Neibergall/AP

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking the mailing of mifepristone. A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in-person at clinics. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail has become a major way that abortions are provided — including to states where bans are in place. The decision sets up a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

Marquette Medical Urgent Care in Michigan started offering medication abortion to patients last summer. The physician who owns the urgent care started the service after Planned Parenthood closed a clinic, leaving the remote Upper Peninsula without in-person options for abortion care.

A person holds two packages of medicine in their hands, one in an orange box, the other in a white plastic pill bottle. In the background is an instruction sheet, with the headline "How to take your medication" partially visible.

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking mailing of prescriptions of mifepristone.

A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in person at clinics.

“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,’” the ruling states.

Judges have long deferred to the Food and Drug Administration’s judgments on the safety and appropriate regulation of drugs.

FDA officials under President Donald Trump have repeatedly stated the agency is conducting a new review of mifepristone’s safety, at the direction of the president.

The judges noted in their ruling that FDA “could not say when that review might be complete and admitted it was still collecting data.”

In a court filing, Louisiana’s attorney general and a woman who says she was coerced into taking abortion pills requested that the FDA rules be rolled back to when the pills were allowed to be prescribed and dispensed only in person.

Dr. Maya Bass stands in front of a blue background.

A Louisiana-based federal judge last month ruled that those allowances undermined the state’s abortion ban but stopped short of undoing the regulations immediately.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail have become a major way that abortions are provided — including to states where bans are in place.

“This is going to affect patients’ access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state in the nation,” said Julia Kaye, an ACLU lawyer. “When telemedicine is restricted, rural communities, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence and communities of color suffer the most.”

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to end early pregnancies. It is typically used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol.

Because of rare cases of excessive bleeding, the FDA initially imposed strict limits on who could prescribe and distribute the pill — only specially certified physicians and only after an in-person appointment where the person would receive the pill.

Both those requirements were dropped during the COVID-19 years. At the time, FDA officials under President Joe Biden said that after more than 20 years of monitoring mifepristone use, and reviewing dozens of studies involving thousands of women, it was clear that women could safely use the pill without direct supervision.

Friday’s ruling sets up a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

The conservative-majority high court overturned abortion as a nationwide right in 2022 but unanimously preserved access to mifepristone two years later.

That 2024 decision sidestepped the core issues, however, by ruling that the anti-abortion doctors behind the case didn’t have legal standing to sue.

News

Jury Convicts Florida Ex-Rep. David Rivera in Conspiracy Trial

Published

11 hours ago

May 1, 2026

Press Room

Jury Convicts Florida Ex-Rep. David Rivera in Conspiracy Trial

A federal jury convicted former Representative David Rivera of Florida on Friday, finding him guilty of conspiracy and six other crimes for secretly lobbying officials in Washington on behalf of the Venezuelan government in 2017 and 2018.

Prosecutors presented evidence during the five-week trial in Miami showing that Venezuela’s state-run oil company had secretly hired Mr. Rivera’s consulting firm for $50 million to lobby members of Congress and the White House for a thaw in U.S.-Venezuela relations.

The revelation ran contrary to how Mr. Rivera, a Republican, had portrayed himself in public. He made a political career, first as a state lawmaker and later as a congressman, as a strident anti-Communist. Mr. Rivera served in Congress from 2011 to 2013.

He had previously been the subject of several state and federal investigations into improper campaign dealings. He was also found guilty in the criminal case of failing to register as a foreign agent and money laundering, and faces about 10 years in prison.

His defense lawyers in the criminal case had argued that Mr. Rivera was not working for Nicolás Maduro’s government but rather surreptitiously trying to oust him. They also said that Mr. Rivera did not need to register as a foreign agent because his firm’s contract was with an American company, PDV USA, a U.S. subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, and not with the state-run company itself.

The 12-member jury also convicted one of Mr. Rivera’s associates, Esther Nuhfer, on four charges. Prosecutors said that Mr. Rivera, 60, split the secret contract earnings, which ultimately amounted to about $20 million after the company terminated the contract, with Ms. Nuhfer and two people who were not charged in the case. Ms. Nuhfer, 52, is a political consultant based in Miami.

Roger Cruz, an assistant U.S. attorney and the lead prosecutor, said in his closing argument on Tuesday that Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer decided to keep the contract secret because of “greed.”

“Without their keeping it secret, they would not have got a single penny,” he said. “If anyone found out, their careers would be over.”

The trial drew widespread attention when it began because prosecutors called Secretary of State Marco Rubio to testify against Mr. Rivera, his longtime friend and former housemate in Tallahassee when they both served in the Florida Legislature.

Mr. Rubio, who has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, was a Republican U.S. senator from Florida in the years that Mr. Rivera was secretly lobbying for Venezuela. Mr. Rubio held two meetings with Mr. Rivera at that time and testified in court that he had no idea about Mr. Rivera’s secret contract.

Other prosecution witnesses included Brian Ballard, a major lobbyist and top fund-raiser for President Trump, and Hugo Perera, one of the other two men who admitted to taking part in the conspiracy. Mr. Perera was not charged because he agreed to testify against Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer.

Mr. Perera testified that Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer had kept the contract secret because they knew it would create a political scandal if it became public. Defense lawyers noted that Mr. Perera, a developer who had served prison time for cocaine trafficking and tax fraud in the 1990s, was allowed to keep the roughly $5 million he made from the Venezuela deal.

One of the defense witnesses was Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, a Republican, who testified that he worked with Mr. Rivera in 2017 to try to persuade Mr. Maduro to step down and hold presidential elections. Mr. Sessions also said that he did not know at the time about Mr. Rivera’s secret Venezuela contract.

Edward R. Shohat, one of Mr. Rivera’s defense lawyers, told jurors in his closing argument that prosecutors had tried to confuse them. “All that he was about was removing Mr. Maduro,” Mr. Shohat said of Mr. Rivera.

David O. Markus, a defense lawyer for Ms. Nuhfer, said she had signed onto the contract “in good faith,” believing it was with a U.S. subsidiary. She would never “in a billion years” have tried to help the Maduro government, Mr. Markus said.

News

Thousands in US to join ‘no school, no work, no shopping’ May Day protest in economic blackout

Published

14 hours ago

May 1, 2026

Press Room

Thousands in US to join ‘no school, no work, no shopping’ May Day protest in economic blackout

Thousands are set to join an economic blackout for International Workers’ Day on Friday, as part of 3,500 “May Day Strong” events across the country. Organizers are calling for “no school, no work, no shopping” with walkouts, marches, block parties and other gatherings planned into the evening.

May Day has long been an annual day of protest for the labor movement, and this year, many active movements are converging to fight for “a nation that puts workers over billionaires”. Demanding no ICE, no war, and taxing the rich, the May Day Strong coalition includes labor unions, immigrants rights groups, political organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and the organizers behind the No Kings protests. Friday’s economic disruption builds on a similar coordinated effort out of Minnesota in January, when tens of thousands of Twin Cities residents took off from school and work to flood the streets in protest of federal immigration agents storming the city.

Neidi Dominguez, founding executive director of Organized Power in Numbers and an executive team member of May Day Strong, said that they expect more than twice the number of May Day events than last year.

Leah Greenberg of Indivisible, one of the main organizations behind No Kings, described the May Day economic blackout as a “structure test” for the movement.

“We are asking people to take a step into further exerting their power in all aspects of their lives – as workers, as students, as members of local organizing hubs,” she said. “It’s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.”

Teachers’ unions and students are an active part of the fight, a continuation of their months of organizing against ICE. At least 15 school districts in North Carolina have given teachers the day off to join a statewide May Day “Kids Over Corporations” rally for public education funding. In Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union fought and won to have May Day made a “day of civic action”.

“As educators, we feel a very real accountability to the young people in the families that we serve,” Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Illinois Federation of Teachers, said earlier this week. “We want to connect people not just to the affordability crisis but the crisis of our institutions being marginalized in this moment and the impact on our young people.”

Sanshray Kukutla, a student at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and organizer with the campus’s Sunrise Movement chapter, is helping coordinate a local walkout for students, teachers, workers and residents. “We’re taking collective action to send a message to the billionaire class: it’s our labor, our spending, and our participation that keeps the whole system running, and if we don’t work, they don’t have profits,” said Kukutla.

Organizers say the day of action is an effort to build toward a general strike, which was essentially outlawed through the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act and hasn’t happened in the US since. As a workaround, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), has called for unions to work toward a general strike on 1 May 2028, by having existing union contracts expire in unison.