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The boss’s bonus is an annual debating point at Britain’s biggest company. But that’s not the only issue this year
AstraZeneca is used to facing protests over pay at its annual general meetings, given the position of its chief executive, Pascal Soriot, as the for most of the past five years. But pay is not the only issue overshadowing this year’s virtual gathering on Friday.
Britain’s biggest listed company, valued at about £170bn, faces investigations in China over import and data breaches, while it ran into controversy when it of its vaccine site in Speke, near Liverpool, in late January, after failing to hammer out a state support package with the UK government.

‘Baseline’ 10% import levy takes effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses, with some higher tariffs to begin next week
Donald Trump’s on all imports from many countries, including the UK, has come into force after 48 hours of turmoil.
US customs agents began collecting the unilateral tariff at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses on Saturday, with higher levies on goods from – including from the EU, which will be hit with a 20% rate.

The US president’s sweeping, unprecedented tariffs on countries around the world are threatening to reshape the global economy – so, what exactly happens next?
On Thursday evening, towards the end of a long week at a textiles factory on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Thi Dieu and her husband were watching the news. More than 8,700 miles away, US president Donald Trump was announcing sweeping, unprecedented tariffs on every country around the world. Nowhere was safe, off the western coast of Australia that, for some unexplained reason, were hit with a 10% tariff.
His announcement launched a fierce global trade war and triggered a global market meltdown, including on Trump’s own cherished Wall Street, where hundreds of billions of dollars of stock values evaporated.

PM ready to ditch ‘old assumptions’ and is debating possible changes to fiscal rules to boost growth
Keir Starmer is preparing to rethink key elements of the government’s economic policy in an emergency response to , amid growing concern in Downing Street that the US president’s trade war could do lasting damage to the UK.
The prime minister believes, say allies, that “old assumptions should be discarded” in the UK’s response, suggesting he and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, may be – despite having promised not to do so – or even possibly change their “iron clad” fiscal rules to allow more borrowing and fire up economic growth at home in the event of recession.

Labor and Coalition would both end Chinese company Landbridge’s long-term lease of strategically important asset
The Chinese company that controls the Port of Darwin has accused Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton of treating it like “a political football” in the middle of a federal election campaign.
Federal Labor and the Coalition have both announced that if elected on 3 May they would end Landbridge’s long-term lease of the Port of Darwin, arguing it is strategically important and should be controlled by an Australian entity.

PM says two options on table: for an Australian-owned company to take control, or for port to return to being a government asset
The Labor government is on the hunt for a buyer for the port of Darwin despite the Chinese-owned company who holds the lease insisting it is not for sale.
Anthony Albanese revealed the plan after calling in to local Darwin radio on Friday afternoon in a deliberate attempt to get ahead of a similar announcement the Coalition made on Saturday.

Dozens of Chinese restaurant chains are opening their doors in America. But anti-China sentiment in the US is still strong.

Trump’s tariffs could lead to cheap imports being ‘dumped’ on our shores. But is that always bad?
Trump’s sweeping new tariffs have left and . Politicians, economists, and everyday people around the world have been scrambling to understand what it all means and what happens next.
While , Europe and China talk tough, the response in Australia has been more muted.

Deadline set by US president was supposed to be Saturday, with Trump now considering decreasing tariffs to get deal
said he will sign an executive order to extend the ban deadline. This is the the president will have delayed the ban or sale of the social media app, and will punt the deadline to 75 days from now.
The TikTok deal “requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed”, Trump on his Truth Social platform on Friday.

Released court statement says alleged Chinese spy helped draft private letters to Chinese president
The Duke of York sent letters directly to China’s president, the prince’s former senior adviser told a special immigration tribunal, with an alleged Chinese spy advising him on how to write them.
Dominic Hampshire, who worked for Andrew from 2019-22, said Andrew had “always had a communication channel” with Xi Jinping that was “accepted” and may even have been encouraged by Buckingham Palace and the late queen.

Beijing imposes punitive 34% extra tariffs on all goods imported from US, exacerbating stock market sell-off

China has hit back hard against Donald Trump’s “bullying” tariffs, raising fears that the escalating trade war could trigger a global recession and prompting fresh turmoil in financial markets.
Beijing retaliated on Friday with punitive 34% additional tariffs on all goods imported from the US – mirroring the US decision and exacerbating a sell-off on global stock markets.

As the White House retools US imperialism with import duties, others must resist dependency – deepening regional ties and reducing exposure to chokepoints
When Donald Trump stood before in the Rose Garden he declared “”, promising to stand up for Main Street. Whether that pledge will be fulfilled is moot. He will declare victory either way. What the US president offered was not just an economic programme, but an imperial one.
Mr Trump’s logic, if it exists, lies in the 397-page on “foreign trade barriers” he brandished on Wednesday. Its message is brutally : you may sell your goods to Walmart shoppers, but only if you let US cloud services hoover up your data, US media flood your screens and US tech monopolies operate on their terms – not yours.  is the test case for Trump’s platform nationalism: only US firms may mine data, reap profits and rule the digital empire.
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