Far-right links and Putin praise: fears over £600m UK history theme park plan

French family behind project visited Kremlin in 2014 to discuss building ‘Tsarland’ in annexed CrimeaWith its spectacular shows featuring Viking longboats, Roman charioteers and sword-wielding knights who perform death-defying stunts, Puy du Fou in France is consistently ranked among the world’s best theme parks. Each performance of its centrepiece Cinéscénie show, which depicts 700 years of French history, features more than 1,000 actors, hundreds of horses and about 800 fireworks.Now the company has set its sights on bringing its brand of immersive history to the UK via a £600m investment to build its mock medieval castles, hotels and restaurants on farmland just off the M40 in Oxfordshire. It has asked the upmarket property firm Savills to help with its planning applications and is expected to look for British co-investors for a project that it says will create thousands of jobs.Some who live near the site, however, are dismayed at the lack of attention given to what they see as the French company’s dark underbelly, including ties to the far right and a past flirtation with Vladimir Putin

Oil workers ‘could strike’ to protect jobs in green transition; Trump tariffs hit US economic growth – as it happened

Oil workers and tanker drivers could take strike action in an effort to force UK and Scottish ministers to protect jobs threatened by the green transition, Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary has predicted.Graham told trade union activists based at PetroIneos’s Grangemouth oil refinery near Edinburgh, which is set to close over the next 18 months with the loss of 400 jobs, that direct action was being considered.Speaking outside Scottish Labour’s annual conference in Glasgow, she suggested Unite members could target petrol and diesel production, throttling fuel supplies to forecourts, our Scotland editor Severin Carrell writes.Graham told the rally:“Puts these politicians on notice, we are not going to allow oil and gas workers to be the coal miners of our generation. I have already been meeting with refinery reps up and down the countries in Britain, and we will escalate this action if necessary

A prize worth pursuing: has Elizabeth line shown what rail investment can achieve?

Halfway to a billion journeys, and it’s only just begun. Amid the recent gloom, struggles and doubts besetting Britain’s railway there is a bright beacon of hope: the Elizabeth line.Now accounting for one in seven national rail journeys, the east-west cross-London railway has smashed forecasts and remoulded the travel habits and urban geography of the south-east.So far, so good for the lucky Londoners upgraded from the tube to a far quicker, cleaner and quieter ride. But beyond, with the north of England still waiting for promised better railways, and a chancellor beating the drum for infrastructure investment, the line serves to demonstrate that the nation can indeed still build things, and that the people will absolutely come

UK regulator fines four banks £100m over traders’ sharing of information

The UK competition regulator has fined four major banks, including HSBC and Citi, more than £100m after it found traders had been using Bloomberg chatrooms to share sensitive information about government bonds.The penalties follow a long-running investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that discovered that individual traders at Citi, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Deutsche Bank had messaged rival bankers about the buying and selling of UK government bonds – known as gilts – on specific dates between 2009 and 2013.The CMA said the banks had put in place “extensive compliance measures” to avoid similar behaviour by its staff, but it announced a series of fines on Friday. RBC received the largest fine (£34.2m), followed by Morgan Stanley (£29

Willingness to ease off ‘debt brake’ may decide the German election

Germany is used to running its economy with the brake on. Ever since the 2008 financial crisis Berlin has sought to burnish a reputation as the world capital of fiscal discipline, with a near-pious aversion to debt and pride in strong government finances.Under a rule known as the “debt brake” – introduced in 2009 by Angela Merkel to show Germany was committed to balancing the books after the banking crash – the federal government is required to limit annual borrowing to 0.35% of GDP.After this weekend’s elections it might not be long before the constitutional handbrake is relaxed to help reboot Europe’s largest economy with debt-funded firepower, and to find room for higher defence spending

St Pancras and Channel tunnel plan rail routes to Germany and Switzerland

St Pancras railway station in London and the Channel tunnel operator have agreed to work together to open up more trains from Britain to France, and routes to Germany and Switzerland.The agreement is the latest sign of growing momentum for new passenger rail links from England across the Channel, after Great Britain’s only international station announced plans to triple the number of people who can travel through every hour.St Pancras station is looking at ways to nearly triple the number of passengers passing through at peak times from 1,800 to 5,000, in an effort to open up more services to France and routes to Germany and Switzerland.London St Pancras Highspeed (LSPH) – the company formerly known as HS1 that runs St Pancras – and Getlink, the Paris-based Channel tunnel operator, said they would work together to shorten journey times, improve timetable coordination, align on growth strategies and introduce more trains each hour for international services in each direction.In January the rail regulator for Great Britain, the Office of Rail and Road, forced HS1 to cut the prices it charges rail companies for using its track between St Pancras and the tunnel to try to encourage new entrants