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WASHINGTON — U.S. Vice President Mike Pence says he fully expects billionaire GOP donor Betsy DeVos will be confirmed as education secretary with his tie-breaking vote. Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Pence says the Trump administration is “very confident” she will take up her Cabinet post soon. Last week, two Republican senators, Susan Collins of [...]

Today is D-Day in Washington — the confirmation debate and vote on Betsy DeVos, one of Donald Trump’s most controversial nominees and the most contested. Despite the assurance of President Trump’s spokesman Sean Spicer the confirmation is a cinch, the administration is making a last-ditch push today for DeVos in an email solicitation pleading with [...]

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday called on the Republican-led Congress to allow a vote on funding to combat the Zika virus, calling the efforts to fight it a “national emergency.” Biden called for an up-or-down vote speaking alongside fellow Democrats at the Capitol. U.S. lawmakers are mired in a political logjam over $1.1 [...]

Britain’s services sector enjoyed a record rise last month, as companies shrugged off the initial shock of the vote to leave the EU, according to a survey of business activity that adds to signs the economy has escaped recession in the immediate aftermath of the referendum. The Markit/CIPS purchasing managers’ index (pdf) for August rose [...]

Owen Smith says he will try to stop Theresa May formally triggering Brexit unless she promises a referendum on the final deal or calls a general election to approve it. The Labour leadership challenger said his party should not give the Tories a “blank cheque” on negotiations. But rival Jeremy Corbyn said Parliament had to [...]

Sales of prime London real estate jumped 38 percent in the week after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, as a slide in the British pound attracted bargain hunters seeking a rare opportunity to buy the city’s property at a discount. The number of residential real estate sales in London during the last [...]

LONDON — The British pound dropped sharply Tuesday to a 31-year low on concerns that the country’s decision to leave the European Union will cause a steep slide in U.K. commercial real estate values and hurt the wider economy. Markets were jittery after three financial firms stopped trading in their respective U.K. commercial property funds [...]

During the second world war, my late father-in-law was conscripted into the army and forced to fight for Nazi Germany. My mother was a young girl in London, running to air raid shelters and seeing local streets destroyed by the blitz. A first meeting of the in-laws might have been awkward but Albert had been [...]

A second teaching union is to ballot its members on taking industrial action over their workload. The Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) said an indicative ballot showed the majority of its 8,000 members supported taking action. Last week, Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, said its secondary school members would go on a partial work [...]

Oil prices settled down more than 1 percent on Wednesday after a smaller-than-expected U.S. inventory drawdown and amid jitters ahead of a vote on whether Britain should stay in the European Union. Crude futures rose early in the day, before the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a stockpile decline of 917,000 barrels for the [...]

British home prices will plummet if the United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union this week, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross said Tuesday. The bulk of WL Ross & Co.’s business in the U.K. is in mortgage lending. Ross sees a home price collapse hitting older Britons particularly hard. Older people are skewing to vote [...]

President Dilma Rousseff became expected to come to be Brazil’s first chief in greater than two many years to be removed from office when the Senate votes on Wednesday on whether or not to vicinity her on trial for breaking price range regulations. If her warring parties garner a easy majority within the 81-seat Senate, [...]