Month: September 2022

The average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage hit 6.02% this week, more than double what it was a year ago.

For families hoping to buy a home, the moves compound affordability problems.

The rise comes as the US central bank aggressively raises rates in an effort to reduce the pressures driving up inflation across the economy.

US consumer prices rose by 8.3% in the year to August, the fastest rate in almost 40 years, the Labor Department said this week.

The figure was higher than expected, raising expectations that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates aggressively. Mortgage rates have spiked in anticipation of the moves.

“Rates continued to rise alongside hotter-than-expected inflation numbers this week, exceeding 6% for the first time since late 2008,” said Sam Khater, chief economist at Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage firm that released the interest rate data.

By raising borrowing costs, policymakers are hoping to lower demand from businesses and households, thereby reducing the pressures pushing up prices.

But in the housing market, while higher rates have slowed sales, property prices continue to climb.

The cost of a typical home in the US was more than $400,000 (£348,000) in July, up more than 10% from a year earlier.

“Although the increase in rates will continue to dampen demand and put downward pressure on home prices, inventory remains inadequate,” Mr Khater said.

The spike in mortgage rates is a stark shift for the housing market in the US, which has enjoyed relatively low borrowing costs since 2008, when the US central bank slashed rates during the financial crisis to help prop up the economy.

The Federal Reserve cut rates again when the pandemic hit in 2020, helping to usher in a period of frenzied home buying with record price increases.

That era came to an end in March, when the bank started to raise rates rapidly, responding to signs that rapid price increases were becoming entrenched across the economy.

Many mortgage brokers and realtors have already announced job cuts in response to the slowdown.

Mr Dearie, 78, will be “special master” and decide whether any documents are off limits in any legal proceedings.

He had been proposed by Mr Trump’s team and the US Department of Justice previously said it did not object.

The former US president is being investigated for his handling of classified materials.

Department of Justice officials previously said that documents stored at Mr Trump’s Florida home were likely to have been concealed as part of an effort to obstruct an FBI investigation.

The authorities say these documents should have been handed over to the National Archives – which US presidents are legally obliged to do upon leaving office.

Mr Trump denies any kind of wrongdoing, arguing that as president he had declassified all the documents, and that they were kept securely at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The request for a special master – an independent lawyer who decides if any of the records are covered by attorney-client or executive privilege – was made by Mr Trump’s team.

Earlier this month, a judge granted Mr Trump’s request – and banned the US government from reviewing or using the seized materials for its investigation until the special master’s independent review has been completed.

On Thursday, US federal Judge Aileen Cannon appointed Mr Dearie and also ruled that the Department of Justice was not allowed to resume the files review.

The department had earlier said it would take the case to an appeals court if Judge Cannon ruled against their request.

It means the justice department’s ongoing criminal investigation will now be slowed down because the government cannot review or seize materials for its investigation until the special master’s review has been completed.

The Department of Justice resisted Mr Trump’s request saying that any presidential records seized in the FBI’s 8 August search of Mar-A-Lago “belong to the United States, not to the former president”.

It is not clear how long the special master’s review will take.

Mr Trump’s lawyers have argued some of the documents are covered by attorney-client privilege – a part of US law that allows people to keep conversations with their lawyers private.

His legal team have also claimed “executive privilege” over the documents, which allows presidents to keep certain communications under wraps.

However, some legal experts argue that these moves are merely a tactic to delay proceedings – since the documents have already been looked at.

In his first visit to the nation as monarch, he and the Queen Consort will attend a prayer and reflection service for the Queen at Llandaff Cathedral.

After that, the royal couple will travel to Cardiff Bay for an event at the Senedd.

They will then greet members of the public in the grounds of Cardiff Castle as part of their final engagement.

It is the final part of the King’s tour of the UK’s four nations, following trips to Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Following the Queen’s death at Balmoral in Scotland, services took place in Edinburgh, before the King travelled to Northern Ireland on Tuesday.

More than 2,000 people were inside the castle at the weekend for the King’s proclamation ceremony, while hundreds more lined the streets outside.

But many more are expected on Friday to catch a glimpse of the new monarch.

Cardiff council said people should expect very long queues from early in the day, with entry to the castle grounds on a first-come, first-served basis.

People have also been invited to line the route as the King approaches the castle and to leave flowers on the lawn on either side of City Hall’s main entrance.

The King is a familiar face this side of Offa’s Dyke, having visited regularly in his former role as the Prince of Wales.

In fact, it will be his second visit to the Senedd in less than a year. In October 2021, he opened the new term of the Welsh Parliament, along with Camilla – now the new Queen Consort – and the Queen.

While exact timings have not been given, the King and Queen Consort are due to arrive at Llandaff Cathedral on Friday morning for a service in memory of the Queen.

They will then travel to Cardiff Bay to meet Members of the Senedd.

From there, they will travel to the city centre where a special reception will take place at Cardiff Castle.

There is an extensive list of road closures around the city with the arrival of the royal couple – some in Llandaff lasting more than two days.

High Street, Heol Fair and Cathedral Green will be shut to cars until Saturday.

In the city centre, roads including North Road, Kingsway, Duke Street, Castle Street, Westgate Street and Wood Street will either be fully or partially closed between 06:00 and 18:00.

Depending on crowds, further closures could be brought in on Lloyd George Avenue.

Cardiff council warned car parks would be extremely busy and many closed – especially those in Llandaff.

The local authority recommended people who live locally should walk, while those coming from further afield have been asked to travel by train, although services are expected to be busy.

The nearest railway stations to Llandaff Cathedral are Waungron Park and Fairwater, but passengers travelling to Llandaff from Cardiff Central are advised to use the bus.

In the city centre, bus routes will be diverted and the St Mary Street taxi rank will be closed from 06:00 until 18:00.

On Sunday, a woman was arrested in Edinburgh after she was seen holding a sign with an expletive and the words “abolish the monarchy” during a proclamation ceremony for the new King. She was later charged with a breach of the peace offence.

On the same day, Symon Hill was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence after shouting “who elected him?” during a proclamation ceremony in Oxford.

A group of activists, including former Plaid Cymru politician Bethan Sayed, are planning a “silent protest” in Cardiff.

“As soon as King Charles III decided to announce that Prince William should become Prince of Wales, so soon after the death of the Queen, many of us felt compelled to respond,” Mrs Sayed said.

“We must discuss the future of Wales and what we want that to look like. Support for independence is on the rise, in two weeks a march and rally for independence will be held on the very streets that the new king will travel on.”

According to the Guardian, the Conservative peer has lost his domestic animal welfare brief and will no longer attend cabinet.

But it is understood he will remain a minister at the Foreign Office, a role he has held since September 2020.

No 10 had halted its reshuffle after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Lord Goldsmith, a long-time environmentalist, was a close ally of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie.

The Guardian, which first reported his departure, said he told staff at the environment department he was “very sad” to be leaving in a farewell letter.

The newspaper reported there were also fears that a trophy hunting ban he championed, which faced opposition from some Conservative MPs, could be dropped.

Lord Goldsmith has previously criticised the green record of Mark Spencer, who was made an environment minister by Ms Truss last week.

In a tweet days after Mr Johnson’s resignation in July after a cabinet revolt, he described Mr Spencer as “the biggest blocker of measures to protect nature, biodiversity, [and] animal welfare”.

Suggesting that Rishi Sunak could make Mr Spencer environment secretary if he won the Tory leadership, Lord Goldsmith said his appointment to the role would be “grim news for nature”.

Magdalena Andersson’s centre-left coalition looks set to narrowly lose to a bloc of right-wing parties, 176 seats to 173, with 99% of the votes counted.

Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson is now expected to form a government.

The bloc includes the Sweden Democrats, a far-right party that has campaigned against rising gang shootings.

The final result is still to be confirmed after a recount, which is standard practice in Sweden.

But despite this, Ms Andersson accepted defeat at a news conference on Wednesday, and said she would officially resign on Thursday.

“In parliament, they have a one or two seat advantage,” she said. “It’s a thin majority, but it is a majority.”

The close-fought election campaign was dominated by gangs, immigration and integration issues, as well as soaring electricity prices.

Ms Andersson was the Nordic nation’s first female PM when she took office last year – she quit on the first day, before returning soon after.

She has been edged out by a four-party right-wing block made up of the Sweden Democrats, Moderate Party, Christian Democrats and Liberals.

It is a momentous turning point for Swedish politics – the Sweden Democrats was once treated as a pariah by political parties, but has now won around 20% of the vote.

It vowed to “make Sweden safe again” by bringing in longer prison sentences and restricting immigration.

However the party’s leader Jimmie Akersson will not become prime minister, the BBC’s Maddy Savage reports from Stockholm, because he does not have the full support of all four parties.

Instead, Ulf Kristersson, leader of the Moderates has said he will start to form a government.

“I am ready to do all I can to form a new, stable and vigorous government for the whole of Sweden and all its citizens,” Mr Kristersson said on Wednesday.

The Sweden Democrats party was born out of a neo-Nazi movement at the end of the 1980s, but has slowly grown stronger while attempting to polish its image.

In 2019 Mr Kristersson started talks with the party to form an alliance – a move which has now changed Sweden’s political landscape.

Ms Andersson told reporters on Wednesday that she understood those concerned at the party’s growing popularity. “I see your concern and I share it,” she said.

Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats had governed Sweden since 2014 and dominated the country’s political landscape since the 1930s.

Sunday’s vote was one of the closest elections ever in Sweden, with thousands of overseas and postal votes needed to be counted to get a clearer picture of who the winner was.

Residents of as many as 22 streets in two districts were urged to evacuate, city head Oleksandr Vilkul said.

He said that overnight two blasts were carried out to increase the water flow from the dam to the Inhulets river, and the situation was now “under control”.

Ukraine said the strike was revenge by Russia for its recent counter-attack.

President Volodymyr Zelensky described Russia as a “terrorist state” after Wednesday’s strike on the Karachunivske reservoir.

“You are weaklings who fight civilians,” Mr Zelensky, who was born in Kryvyi Rih, said in his late night address on Wednesday. “Scoundrels who, having escaped from the battlefield, are trying to do harm from somewhere far away,” he added.

This was an apparent reference to Ukraine’s recent military successes in a swift counter-offensive in the country’s north-eastern Kharkiv region. It has seen Ukraine’s army reclaim swathes of occupied territory, forcing Russian troops to retreat.

The precise scale of Ukraine’s gains has not been verified by the BBC.

In his speech, Mr Zelensky said the reservoir had “no military value at all”.

Water supplies were affected by the attack in the city where more than 600,000 people lived before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. Water broke through the dam and overflowed the banks of the river, officials said.

But speaking on Thursday morning, Mr Vilkul said water levels in the Inhulets river had now “dropped considerably”. He said there were no casualties.

Moscow has not publicly commented on the reported missile strikes.

Russia’s military had earlier admitted hitting energy-generating targets that caused widespread blackouts affecting millions of people in eastern Ukraine last weekend.

On Wednesday morning, Mr Zelensky visited the recently recaptured city of Izyum, a key logistics hub in the Kharkiv region.

He thanked troops who took part in the counter-offensive, and pledged that the Ukrainian flag would return to every city and village in the country.

The pace of the Ukrainian advance appears to have taken Russian forces by surprise, with reports of some of Moscow’s forces abandoning their uniforms to blend in with civilians.

Russia has admitted that its forces have left some towns in the Kharkiv region – but refused to call it a retreat, instead insisting that its forces were regrouping. This claim was widely ridiculed in the West and even in Russia itself.

As Kyiv’s forces move into previously occupied areas, allegations of Russian war crimes have started to emerge.

Locals in the town of Balakliya, also in the Kharkiv region, told the BBC that Russian troops had tortured civilians at the town’s police station during their occupation, while others recounted being electrocuted while in detention.

Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians.

While Russia still controls around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, towns in the eastern Donbas region that fell early in the war have now also become the target for Ukraine’s military. Fierce fighting has been reported there in recent days.

After failing to capture Ukraine’s cities, including the capital Kyiv, in the north and north-east in March, Moscow said it was now focusing on the Donbas – parts of which were already under the control of Russian-backed rebels before the Russian invasion.

On Monday, the Kremlin insisted that it would press on with its invasion “until all the goals that were originally set are achieved”.

A separate Ukrainian counter-attack is continuing in the southern Kherson region, although troop advancements there have been slower.

Along with King Charles and other members of the Royal Family, they processed to Westminster Hall where the Queen will lie in state until Monday.

The sight of the brothers together, walking behind the coffin, will evoke poignant memories of their mother Diana’s funeral 25 years ago.

Crowds applauded the solemn procession.

The Queen’s coffin, carried on a gun carriage, passed below the Buckingham Palace balcony where only three months ago she appeared for the final moments of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

Bandsmen played sombre music to accompany this careful choreography of mourning, Beethoven and Mendelssohn alongside the drumbeat of marching feet – exactly 75 steps per minute – and the sound of horses’ hooves in the autumn sunshine.

The same gun carriage had carried the coffins of the Queen’s father and mother – and as it went past there were ripples of applause and some tears from people crowding along the route.

Walking on foot behind the coffin were the Queen’s four children, King Charles, Princess Anne and Prince Edward, in military uniform, with Prince Andrew, no longer a working royal, in a morning suit and wearing medals.

And behind them were William, now the Prince of Wales, and Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, also as a non-working royal not wearing military uniform.

This time the brothers were side by side, unlike Prince Philip’s funeral last year when they had someone walking between them, in what was seen at the time as a sign of separation.

The brothers appearing together sends a strong visual message of family unity, after so much speculation about tensions and disagreements between them.

Their wives, Catherine and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Camilla, the Queen Consort, travelled in cars behind.

William, Harry, Catherine and Meghan had appeared together at the weekend to greet well-wishers in Windsor, tuning into a public mood wanting reconciliation, and bringing back memories of the “fab four” of young royals.

A thundercloud of media interest has hung over claims of a strained brotherly relationship, now conducted from different sides of the Atlantic.

But it’s not clear what the feelings might really be for a family whose private grief comes with so much public scrutiny.

Catherine is now the new Princess of Wales and the images of the coffin procession will bring back thoughts of another September funeral, when Diana in 1997 was buried from Westminster Abbey.

William and Harry, as young schoolboys, walked in that funeral procession, with their father King Charles and grandfather Prince Philip. In step at a time when their worlds had been turned upside down.

Today’s procession was another national moment. Crowds held up mobile phones to capture a glimpse of history taking place before them. Big Ben rang out around the streets, tolling each minute. Queen Elizabeth had left Buckingham Palace for the very final time.

Her connections with the palace went back across the eras. She’d been Christened there 96 years ago and there were guests in that family photo who had been alive at the same time as the Duke of Wellington, victor of Waterloo.

The coffin has been covered with the emblems of the monarchy, the Royal Standard and the Imperial State Crown. But there are also personal connections in the flowers in the wreath. Along with white roses and white dahlias there was pine from Balmoral and lavender and rosemary, a symbol of remembrance, from the gardens at Windsor.

Marie Jackson, BBC News, at the Mall

Among those on the Mall was Nicola Dainton, a 56-year-old grandmother from Chorley Wood, Hertfordshire, who was joined by her daughter Emily, and her grandchildren, Freddie, two, and baby Millie, for what she described as a “very emotional” moment.

She said Princes William and Harry appeared “deep in their thoughts of the Queen” but said the moment felt very different to their mother’s funeral.

“They were two young boys then. This felt more they were there to support the family,” she added.

Dawn Livingstone, who was with six of her family all from County Tyrone, said the moment had been sad, sombre and fitting.”She has left a legacy that will never be paralleled by anyone else,” she said.Matthew Ferguson, her son-in-law, said: “It’s the closest I have ever been to the Queen. It’s been a privilege and an overwhelming experience.”The family, who left home at 02:00, are now heading to Westminster Hall to take in more of the atmosphere before a 22:00 flight home.

Royal aides have described this procession as a significant symbolic turning point in the funeral journey. The Queen was head of her family, but she was also head of state – and here her family were putting her back into the public realm.

The procession was taking her to the heart of political life, through Whitehall, past Downing Street and to the Houses of Parliament.

At Westminster Hall, the oldest part of the Palace of Westminster, there was a short service of prayers and readings conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

Soldiers from the Grenadier Guards had lifted the coffin into place on a “catafalque”, a raised platform inside the medieval hall.

With the Royal Family standing in the historic hall, a psalm was sung – “O Lord, thou hast searched me out and known me” – and a reading which began “Let not your heart be troubled”.

Prince Harry and Meghan appeared to be holding hands as they left.

From 17:00 BST on Wednesday, the Queen’s lying-in-state will begin, when the public will have their chance to pay respect, until the morning of the funeral on Monday.

The queues have already started and everyone, like the Queen’s family in the procession, will have arrived with, and will leave with, their own memories.