Iran’s economy in crisis as US launches new sanctions campaign

US trade representative Jamieson Greer has a level-headed reputation but commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and White House adviser Peter Navarro also have key roles Having reportedly read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, in French, during a military tour of duty in Iraq, Jamieson Greer considered himself an unlikely target for accusations of francophobia. But Donald Trump’s US trade representative, hitherto one of the president’s less high-profile cabinet members, found himself in that uncomfortable position amid the acrimonious collapse of bilateral trade talks with Canada that now threatens to degenerate into an all-out trade war between the two close trading partners whose economies are tightly intertwined...

Exclusive: How a court case over an unoccupied office block could end a widely used tax avoidance scheme From the outside, the seven-storey building at 2 America Square looks like any other office block in the heart of London’s financial district. Located about half a mile from Tower Bridge, one might expect it to be a hive of commercial activity, teeming with employees holding important meetings. However, much of the property is home not to staff vying for their next bonus, but to stacks of nondescript black boxes arranged in neat lines...

Guidance says states must implement ‘comprehensive measures’ to address legacy of racial discrimination A UN committee has said countries are legally obliged to consider reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and take other ⁠measures to address the enduring ⁠legacy of racial ​discrimination. Guidance published on Monday by the committee on the elimination of racial discrimination (CERD) said the obligations arose from ⁠a legally binding 1965 convention on racial discrimination, not from the legal standards that existed when the slave trade took place...