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LONDON — A British austerity budget hit the pound and gilts on Thursday, with stocks suffering worldwide on the glum economic outlook and the prospect of painfully high interest rates to curb inflation.

Britain unveiled a painful budget with £55 billion ($65 billion) of tax hikes and spending cuts despite confirming its economy was already in recession.

Finance minister Jeremy Hunt said the measures were needed to bring financial stability after recent turmoil in the markets, insisting they would alleviate rather than aggravate the downturn.

But the measures didn't reassure British markets, with the pound falling and government borrowing costs rising. Losses on London stocks deepened, before later easing.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said upheaval in markets in September over the profligate fiscal policies of the previous government had largely subsided, meaning a budget that makes Britain a worse place to do business was no longer necessary.

"Today's budget should have walked the line between pushing inflation lower, without completely crushing demand in the economy with too many tax rises, and spending cuts," Hewson said in a note to investors. 

"Initial analysis of today's package suggests that we've got a lot of the former, and not too much of the latter, which is bad news if you're looking to get businesses to invest," he added.

The pound was down around 1 per cent to $1.1799 in afternoon trading. 

London's blue-chip FTSE 100 index was down 0.5 per cent.

Traders fear the budget will worsen Britain's cost-of-living crisis after inflation spiked to a 1981 peak of 11.1 per cent, and the government confirmed that the British economy was already in a recession that could last two years.

Wall Street opened sharply lower as investors worried the US Federal Reserve (Fed) will continue to aggressively raise interest rates to lower rampant inflation, even if it means pushing the economy in recession.

Investors have been reassured by some data suggesting inflationary pressures are diminishing, as well as the overall economy is holding up well, but statements by some Fed policymakers spooked traders. 

"Concerns that the Fed will overtighten and force the US economy into a hard landing were partly behind yesterday's selling and widening inversion of the yield curve," said Patrick O'Hare at Briefing.com

"Those concerns remain in place today and have been heightened by remarks made this morning by some voting" members of the Fed's monetary policymaking committee, he added.

The Fed's main interest rate is currently at 3.75 to 4 per cent, but one Fed member said it may need to go as high as 7 per cent. Another said a contraction in the economy may be needed.

Oil prices fell back on worries about Chinese demand.

"China remains a downside risk for oil in the near term, despite its recent relaxation of certain COVID curbs," said Craig Erlam at OANDA online trading platform.

"A surge in cases in major cities, mass testing, and restrictions will hit economic activity despite recent measures which will weigh on demand in the world's second-largest economy," he added.

LONDON — British inflation has jumped to a 41-year high on soaring energy and food bills in a worsening cost-of-living crisis, data showed Wednesday on the eve of a key budget.

The Consumer Prices Index hit 11.1 per cent in October, reaching the highest level since 1981, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement.

That compared with 10.1 per cent in September, which matched the level in July and had already been the highest in 40 years.

Domestic fuel bills rocketed again despite the UK government's energy price freeze as the market faced more fallout from key producer Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The October figure beat market expectations of 10.7 per cent and was higher than the Bank of England's forecast peak.

"Rising gas and electricity prices drove headline inflation to its highest level for over 40 years, despite the Energy Price Guarantee," said ONS Chief Economist Grant Fitzner.

Over the last year, gas prices have leapt by 130 percent and electricity prices by 66 per cent, according to the ONS.

Runaway inflation comes despite state energy support, which sought to limit annual energy bills at an average of £2,500 per year.

Finance minister Jeremy Hunt blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine for spiking prices, as well as the easing of pandemic curbs.

'Tough' decisions 

Hunt is expected on Thursday to hike taxes and slash spending, despite the cost-of-living squeeze, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak attempts to fix economic chaos wrought by predecessor Liz Truss.

"The aftershock of COVID and Putin's invasion of Ukraine is driving up inflation in the UK and around the world," Hunt said Wednesday.

"This... is eating into pay cheques, household budgets and savings, while thwarting any chance of long-term economic growth."

The Ukraine conflict has also sent inflation soaring to the highest level in decades worldwide, sparking economic turmoil.

That has forced major central banks to raise interest rates, risking the prospect of recession as higher borrowing costs hurt businesses and consumers.

The Bank of England this month sprang its biggest rate hike since 1989 to combat sky-high inflation — and warned the UK economy may

experience a record-long recession until mid-2024.

The BoE lifted borrowing costs by 0.75 percentage points to 3 per cent — the highest since the 2008 global financial crisis — to cool UK inflation that it saw peaking at almost 11 per cent.

Hunt added that "tough" decisions would be needed in Thursday's budget to help the BoE meet its 2 per cent inflation target. 

"We cannot have long-term, sustainable growth with high inflation," he said.

The UK has meanwhile been blighted by strikes this year, as workers protest over wages that have failed to keep pace with surging inflation.

The retail prices index — an inflation measure which includes mortgage interest payments and is used by trade unions and employers when negotiating wage increases — rocketed to 14.2 per cent in October from 12.6 per cent in September, data showed on Wednesday.

SHARM AL SHEIKH — Small island states whose existence is threatened by rising seas insist they will not leave UN climate talks without a fund to contain the impacts of global warming, a chief negotiator told AFP on Wednesday.

Financing has become a hot-button issue at the COP27 climate talks, with developing nations demanding rich polluters pay for climate-change linked calamities that are already devastating vulnerable populations, known as "loss and damage". 

Rising sea levels, driven by warming, threaten to eventually swallow some small island states — and for them the issue of compensation for cultural and economic losses is crucial. 

"We have given up a lot," said Conrod Hunte of Antigua and Barbuda, lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

"For us to walk away... from here with nothing is not an option."

On Tuesday, the G-77+China bloc of more than 130 developing nations presented a document saying the need for a specific loss and damage fund was "urgent and immediate". 

The United States and the European Union agreed to allow the issue onto the formal agenda at COP27 this year. 

The large historical polluters fear open ended liabilities and have made clear their reluctance to create a fund immediately, preferring discussion on the details to continue into next year and maybe to 2024. 

But the G-77+China bloc want the fund to be agreed upon at this meeting, with the details worked out in time for next year's COP28 in Dubai.

Apart from relatively small pledges from a handful of developed countries and regions, little has been discussed on the potential level of funding, and where it would come from. 

"It's important that we have a fund and have a fund established at this COP to keep the momentum going," Hunte said. 

Negotiations on the specific fund proposals have barely got off the ground, with just days left until the meeting is due to officially close on Friday. 

"We're hoping that they [rich nations] are able to accommodate some of our priorities," Hunte said. "And our priorities from day one have not changed".

"We're here to establish at least an agreement [to work] towards a fund."

'Screaming' 

He's hoping some EU nations will be "flexible" in the talks, and help convince other Western powers to cede. 

While "the EU negotiates as a bloc, there may be five or six countries in there who are actually in support of a fund", he said. 

"They may be forced to convince their partners within that group that [they] may need to give this fund at this COP," he said, adding that developing nations were "overwhelmingly screaming" for the fund. 

One call from wealthy nations is that the pool of international donors paying into climate funding be expanded — this would likely include large emitters like China. 

China, the world's biggest carbon polluter, is considered a developing country in the context of the talks and therefore not among the group of developed nations expected to pay. 

Hunte said Beijing fully supports the creation of a loss and damage fund, adding that AOSIS was not calling for China to contribute financially. 

He acknowledged that even if developing countries get a breakthrough on loss and damage at the Egypt meeting, key details need to be worked out later, with the aim of "finalising everything" before 2024. 

That includes "non-economic" losses like disappearing culture, fading traditions or historical sites being submerged. 

"That is something we will have to negotiate, but at least you would have signalled the fact that there is a loss."

WILMINGTON — Tesla tycoon Elon Musk took the stand on Wednesday as part of a trial over his $50 billion pay package as CEO of the electric car giant.

The arrival was discreet, with the world's richest person arriving in a black Tesla, which parked at the back of the courthouse in a tent set up for the occasion. 

A few minutes later, wearing a black suit and tie, he quietly passed through security to enter the courtroom.

Musk began testifying in the same Delaware court where he faced a lawsuit by Twitter to ensure he went through with his buyout of the social platform.

The $44 billion purchase of Twitter has put the South African billionaire under intense scrutiny after he conducted massive layoffs, scared advertisers, and opened the platform to fake accounts.

The unrelated Tesla case is based on a complaint by shareholder Richard Tornetta, who accused Musk and the company's board of directors of failing in their duties when they authorised the pay plan.

Tornetta alleges that Musk dictated his terms to directors who were not sufficiently independent from their star CEO to object to a package worth around $51 billion at recent share prices.

The Tesla shareholder accuses Musk of "unjustified enrichment" and asked for the annulment of a pay programme that helped make the entrepreneur the richest man in the world.

According to a legal filing, Musk earned the equivalent of $52.4 billion in Tesla stock options over four and a half years after virtually all of the company's targets were met. 

When the plan was adopted it was valued at $56 billion.

The non-jury trial began on Monday with testimony from Ira Ehrenpreis, head of the compensation committee on Tesla's board of directors, who said the targets set were "extraordinarily ambitious and difficult".

Ehrenpreis argued that the board wanted to spur Musk to focus on Tesla at a time when the company was still struggling to gain traction.

'Highly unusual' 

The trial will run through Friday and is being presided over by Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who was to preside over the Twitter case.

There is no deadline for her decision which could take months.

It's "highly unusual" for this kind of case to be brought to trial, Jill Fisch, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP.

"There aren't all that many successful challenges to executive compensation [as] the courts have typically treated this as a business decision," she added.

But the court found in this case that Musk's ownership of about 22 per cent of Tesla and his role as CEO "could have an undue impact" on the board and other shareholders, she noted.

Musk cancelled an in-person appearance on Sunday at an event on the sidelines of the G-20 in Bali to be in court.

Asked why he had not traveled to the tropical Indonesian island, the new Twitter boss joked that his "workload has recently increased quite a lot" after his takeover of the social media giant.

AMMAN — The Kingdom's political and social stability has helped form an attractive business environment and encourage foreign investments in various fields, according to Hani Weiss, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim. 

Weiss, whose company owns and operates Carrefour throughout Jordan, told the Jordan News Agency, Petra, that the Kingdom has “succeeded” in protecting its appeal to foreign investors. 

Weiss attributed this success to His Majesty King Abdullah's ongoing directives in the sector, which have given rise to a regionally competitive investment environment, despite the pressures of global political unrest and the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

He also praised Jordan's economic development resulting from ongoing economic reforms, noting that the economy will undergo "significant" improvement in the coming period, especially following the launch of the Economic Modernisation Vision, which will contribute towards making Jordan an attractive destination for foreign investment. 

The CEO also referred to the measures taken by the government to address the repercussions of the pandemic, noting the vital role these procedures played in re-energising foreign investment and ensuring its sustainability, advancing Jordan’s position among the most appealing Arab countries for foreign investment. 

In this regard, Weiss said that Carrefour dealt with the repercussions of the pandemic with a “high level of proficiency” to ensure the sustainability of its economic contribution to the Jordanian market.

As for the ramifications of global crises, and the Russian-Ukrainian war in particular, the CEO said that these challenges impacted Carrefour as much as they have impacted other brands, especially given that inflation has increased between 5 and 7 per cent. 

The CEO also shed light on Carrefour's renewable energy project. Using solar cells, the project already generates 17,000 megawatts of clean energy and powers 42 out of the company's 53 branches in the Kingdom. 

FORT MCKAY — The acrid stench of gasoline permeates the air. And the soot coats everything in sight: The trees, the bushes, even the snow in winter. And all day long, explosions send the birds soaring to safety.

At Fort McKay near Fort McMurray in western Canada, in the heart of the country's boreal forest, the pines and the people were long ago cleared out to make way for huge open-pit mines dedicated to excavation of oil sands.

It's one of the biggest industrial projects in the world: As seen from above, the zone is in stark contrast to the vast expanse of green surrounding it. Huge black holes are gouged in the brown earth — they are giant pools of water.

Then there is the network of roads on which hundreds of trucks drive every day, and the immense factories, with smoke spewing from wide chimneys.

On the ground, the noise is deafening. And it's quite a scene for the uninitiated: In the middle of the huge basins dug to capture the polluted waters stand huge metal scarecrows clad in helmets and security vests.

The ghoulish creatures are designed to scare away millions of migratory birds that arrive every year in this northern part of Alberta province. Adding to the mayhem: Airhorns that are used several times a minute.

The mines have made the people left in Fort McKay — many of them Indigenous Canadians — very rich. But the installations have also profoundly altered and damaged the land on which their ancestors relied for centuries.

"Everything has changed, everything's destroyed to me now," says 74-year-old Margie Lacorde who lives in the centre of town in a house chock full of knick knacks and framed photographs.

The talkative Lacorde, who belongs to the Metis people, is sad to see the parched, yellowing leaves due to drought, and wishes she could still swim in the rivers and gather berries in the forest like she did in her youth.

The hunting grounds are long gone — the land was sold for industrial use.

"The pollution is killing our nature," Lacorde tells AFP, though she herself worked in the oil industry for years to provide for her family.

She remembers her childhood with a significant bit of nostalgia. 

Back then, families gathered snow and melted it to use as drinking and cooking water. Such a thing would be impossible today — once the snow hits the ground, it's immediately filthy, covered in the dust that filters down from the factories.

'Desecrated' 

"We're First Nations and this is our territory that is all being desecrated by the oil industry for the sake of the dollar, money, prosperity," says Jean L'Hommecourt, an environmental activist who took up the fight her parents once championed.

Even if agreements were reached with Indigenous communities to create jobs and protect some natural resources, the ecological impact of mining the oil sands have been so great that the 59-year-old woman says her people are now at risk.

"I lost my prosperity when the industry came in and took over all our lands and our waters and our access to our wildlife... everything that we depend on to sustain our culture has been compromised by industry," she says bitterly.

The area is a far cry from the picture postcard ideal of the Canadian West. There are no crystalline blue waterways or fish-filled rivers here. 

Instead, Moose Lake — sacred to L'Hommecourt's Dene people — is now only accessible by all-terrain vehicle, a five-hour drive on a road pockmarked by potholes that runs in between the mines.

When she was growing up, L'Hommecourt's family cabin was in the middle of the forest, far away from the noise and bustle. But after the first oil sands mine was built in 1967, development proceeded at a rapid pace.

Today, the active oil sands extraction sites form a chain that is more than 60 kilometres long, hugging the shores of the Athabasca River. 

Fort McKay — population, 800 or so — is a tiny speck on a map of this industrial complex.

Canada is home to 10 per cent of the world's known crude oil reserves — much of that is found in the oil sands of Alberta.

Every day, nearly three million barrels of crude are extracted from the sands, according to official government data, helping to make Canada the world's fourth largest oil producer, and the primary exporter of crude to the United States.

In all, more than 4,800 square kilometres are used for oil sands mining.

At first, local populations were consulted and their fears were noted, L'Hommecourt says.

"And then they just said okay, well, we collected the information, we collected their concerns and everything else and we'll mitigate with the money," she added.

Pollution 

Many environmental activists say the impact of the oil industry is so great that the term "ecocide" is not too strong. Beyond the tangible destruction of the boreal forest, there is the massive amount of pollution in the air.

The oil and gas sector accounts for a quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the latest official figures released this year. Of that total, the oil sands are responsible for 12 per cent.

And traces of other toxic emissions, such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides, have been detected in the soil and the snow dozens of kilometres from the mining zone.

The industry also consumes a massive amount of water, taken from nearby rivers and lakes.

"There's still a lot we need to do on recognising the harm from cleaning up existing operations," says Keith Stewart of the environmental pressure group Greenpeace, slamming companies that drag their feet on such matters.

Stewart nevertheless acknowledges a "huge shift" on protecting the environment in recent years.

"For a long time, even the notion that we could limit expansion was viewed as crazy and now... the idea of large-scale expansion now seems crazy," he said.

That reversal is not uniformly popular, as not everyone here sees the oil sands as a bad thing.

"The reality is that they shut off the oil sands tomorrow, my community would starve," says Ron Quintal, chief of the Fort McKay Metis, noting that nearly everyone around works in or for the industry.

For Quintal, "Indigenous communities have spent 30 to 40 years... trying to get their foot in the door" so it would be "very difficult for us to try to take our people backward".

He added matter-of-factly: "The development of the oil has empowered us to be able to do things that weren't possible before."