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The move coincides with a Trump push to pressure Moscow into talks on ending the war and to withhold U.S. Tomahawk missiles from Kyiv

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration has lifted a key restriction on Ukraine’s use of some long-range missiles provided by Western allies, enabling Kyiv to step up attacks on targets inside Russia and increase pressure on the Kremlin, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Ukraine used a British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missile on Tuesday to strike a Russian plant in Bryansk that produced explosives and rocket fuel, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces announced on social media. It called the strike a “successful hit” that penetrated Russian air defenses.

The unannounced U.S. move to enable Kyiv to use the missile in Russia comes after authority for supporting such attacks was recently transferred from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon to the top U.S. general in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who also serves as NATO commander.

The shift coincided with a push in early October by President Trump to pressure the Kremlin into talks on ending the war, including the possibility that he would approve sending Kyiv U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of more than 1,000 miles. Trump has since backed off that proposal.

However U.S. officials said they expect Ukraine to conduct more cross-border attacks using the Storm Shadow, which is launched from Ukrainian aircraft and can travel more than 180 miles. The U.S. can restrict Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow because the missiles use American targeting data.

In a statement, a White House official said: “This is a war that never would have happened had President Trump been President, something [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin himself acknowledged, and President Trump is trying to get it stopped. The President also negotiated a historic agreement to allow NATO allies to purchase American-made weapons.”

The Pentagon didn’t respond to requests for comment. Ukraine’s General Staff didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Ukraine’s renewed use of Storm Shadows isn’t a game changer on the battlefield. They have a far shorter range than U.S. Tomahawks, and have been used to strike targets in Russia before. But the missiles do enable Kyiv to expand its attacks inside Russia.

Former President Joe Biden approved Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow and U.S. missiles known as Atacms against targets inside Russia toward the end of his administration. But after Trump came into office, the Pentagon set up a review procedure for approving cross-border strikes using U.S. missiles or those from other countries, including Storm Shadow, that rely on U.S. targeting data.

Under the mechanism, the defense secretary had final say over whether Ukraine could employ Western long-range weapons to strike Russia. No attacks were approved until recently when authority for approving such attacks was returned to European Command, two U.S. officials said.

Ukraine is also carrying out attacks well inside Russia with domestically-produced drones and a small number of homegrown missiles. Many of the strikes have been directed against Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Trump has approved sharing that targeting data, which notably includes oil refineries.

“As it has shown, Ukraine is incredibly capable itself of striking deep inside Russia at legitimate military targets that enable the Kremlin’s senseless war, which is straining its economy and has killed or injured more than a million Russians,” said Col. Martin O’Donnell, a NATO spokesman. “It does not need our permission.”

Trump last week expressed interest in holding a second summit with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss ending the war, but talks between the two governments quickly broke down. Trump on Tuesday said such a meeting would be a “waste of time.” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House on Wednesday.

Sen. Angus King (I., Maine), who met with Rutte for an hour on Wednesday morning, said that while sending Tomahawks would strengthen Ukraine’s hand against Putin, the U.S. should be able to have a say over the targets Kyiv hits.

“If we could have some control over the targeting, that it was targeting only military facilities and only facilities supporting the assault on Ukraine, I think that it would be an effective part of convincing Putin that he’s not going to win this war,” King told reporters Wednesday.

The decision to lift the restriction on Storm Shadow occurred before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Trump at the White House last week, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. Zelensky was seeking Tomahawks, which would greatly expand Kyiv’s long range striking power if provided in sufficient numbers. Trump’s rebuff of the request has limited the West’s negotiating leverage with Moscow, analysts said.

The U.S. recently approved selling Ukraine 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles, or ERAMs, which can travel 150 to 280 miles. The Biden administration also provided Atacms surface-to-surface missiles, which have a range of nearly 200 miles, but which haven’t been used against targets inside Russia since Trump returned to the White House.

Ukraine has a small remaining stockpile of Atacms, which stands for Army Tactical Missile Systems. The Trump administration had not said whether it is willing to send more or whether the U.S. European Command will approve their use.

A joint statement from European leaders and Zelensky on Tuesday vowed to “ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defense industry” until Putin “is ready to make peace.”

Group revenues fell 10 percent in the third quarter as Gucci delivered a slight beat.

PARIS — Kering’s new chief executive officer Luca de Meo pledged to double down on his turnaround plan after the ailing French luxury group reported a 10 percent drop in revenues in the third quarter.

Still, a better-than-expected performance at the company’s star brand Gucci provided a glimmer of hope.

Organic sales at the maker of Jackie handbags and Horsebit loafers fell 14 percent in the three months to Sept. 30, beating a company-compiled consensus forecast for a 16 percent decline. This compared with a 25 percent drop for Gucci in the second quarter.

Group revenues totaled 3.42 billion euros, representing a 5 percent decline in comparable terms. This came on the heels of a 15 percent drop in organic sales in the prior quarter, and was markedly better than the 3.31 billion euros the market was expecting.

Organic sales fell 4 percent at Saint Laurent, and rose 1 percent in the “other houses” division, which includes Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Boucheron and Qeelin. Bottega Veneta posted a 3 percent rise, and the Kering eyewear and corporate division saw a 6 percent increase.

Nonetheless, de Meo struck a vigilant note.

“Kering’s third-quarter performance, while representing a clear sequential improvement, remains far below that of the market,” he said in a statement.

“This reinforces my determination to work on all dimensions of the business to return our houses and the group to the prominence they deserve. We are working relentlessly on our turnaround, as shown by our recent decisions,” he added.

Since he officially took up his duties on Sept. 15, Kering has made several big moves geared at reviving Gucci and tackling the group’s net debt, which stood at 9.5 billion euros at the end of June.

Kering postponed a deal with Mayhoola to acquire the remainder of Valentino, and named Francesca Bellettini, one of its most visible and accomplished executives, as president and CEO of Gucci.

Over the weekend, the group said it would sell its beauty division to L’Oréal for 4 billion euros in cash, in addition to granting the French beauty giant long-term fragrance and beauty licenses for some of its top brands. The partnership, hailed as a category game–changer, also includes a joint venture in the field of wellness.

The moves all reflect de Meo’s determination to deliver on his pledge to Kering shareholders in early September. Speaking for this first time since his appointment was announced, the former Renault CEO said he would present a detailed strategy in the spring, but would start implementing his turnaround plan before the end of this year.

“We will initially focus our efforts on the most effective levers to improve the quality of our capital allocation and generate a tangible operational rebound,” de Meo said at the time. “We will have to continue to reduce our debt, cut our costs and, where necessary, rationalize, reorganize and reposition some of our brands.”

Providing some insight into his method, de Meo said it was crucial to act quickly to restore investor confidence. “We obviously have to try to get some mojo back with the market,” he said.

Ahead of the results, RBC Capital Markets raised its share price target for Kering to 240 euros from 220 euros, while maintaining its “perform” rating.

“Kering is under fairly significant pressure to stabilize revenue trends at Gucci principally, and Saint Laurent and Other Houses to a lesser extent. We believe it is in the early innings of its turnaround, with management and creative director changes largely in place,” it said in a research note. “For now it appears that its shares are discounting a full financial revival leaving little incremental upside in the near term in our view.”

Google claims ‘quantum advantage’ that promises drug discovery breakthroughs

Big Tech group says algorithm simulates molecular interactions 13,000 times faster than ‘classical’ supercomputers

Google claimed to have gained an edge in the race to demonstrate the first practical use of a quantum computer, revealing an algorithm that it said could help to open up new techniques in drug discovery and the development of new materials. 

The internet giant called its demonstration an example of “quantum advantage” — the point at which quantum systems gain a clear lead over traditional computers.

The quantum computing world has been poised for evidence that quantum machines are finally reaching a point where they can outperform on certain types of calculations.

In a paper published in the science journal Nature on Wednesday, Google described an algorithm that simulates the quantum mechanical behaviour of systems in nature, such as the way the atoms in a molecule interact.

The company said that, by running the algorithm on its latest quantum chip, it had obtained results 13,000 times faster than would have been possible on a “classical” supercomputer.

The results were also verifiable, Google said, meaning they could be replicated on a second machine — something it had not been able to show before, and an important step towards building confidence in the calculations performed by quantum computers.

Hartmut Neven, head of Google’s Quantum AI research lab, called the work a “demonstration of the first algorithm with verifiable quantum advantage” and “a milestone on the software track”, as more research effort is directed towards developing practical algorithms that can run on quantum systems.

However, the company stopped short of claiming the work would, on its own, have practical uses. Instead, it said the algorithm, known as Quantum Echoes, demonstrated a technique that could be applied to other algorithms used in areas such as materials science and drug discovery.

Its work on Quantum Echoes is “applicable in a lot of quantum simulation systems, and so this is a path to practical quantum advantage, something that would be not only better on a quantum computer, but useful,” said Charina Chou, chief operating officer of Google’s Quantum AI Labs.

In a sign of where it might yield practical results, a second paper published by Google on Wednesday showed how its method could be applied in nuclear magnetic resonance, a technique that is already commonly used to study molecules. That work involved an experiment on a relatively small quantum system that was not able to work faster than a traditional computer, meaning it fell short of full practical quantum advantage.

Previous claims have been met with scepticism. US start-up D-Wave said it had reached the quantum advantage threshold earlier this year, while a group of researchers from the University of Texas and Quantinuum this month said they had shown a form of quantum advantage. Google itself made a controversial claim in 2019 of a similar breakthrough known as quantum supremacy.

However, other researchers have shown that results like these could have been replicated on traditional computers in far less time, or have questioned whether the types of problems solved in these demonstrations will ever have any practical use.

Google’s latest claim has yet to be scrutinised by rival researchers, though it went through a peer review process before publication in Nature. In an unusual move, the company also said it had exhaustively “red-teamed” the research, or putting some of its researchers to work in trying, and failing, to disprove its own results.

Researchers from IBM predicted recently that there were likely to be a number of claims of quantum advantage before the end of 2026, amounting to “a pivotal threshold for the field” as quantum computers come closer to practical use. But it cautioned that the claims would become the subject of intense debate among other researchers and that it was likely to take some time before there was general agreement.

Google‘s controversial 2019 claim to quantum supremacy, also made in a paper in Nature, involved solving a problem in 200 seconds that it said would have taken 10,000 years on a classical supercomputer.

Other researchers quickly showed ways to do the calculation much faster on a classical machine, and Neven said that improvements in chips since then meant it would only take six seconds on the latest GPUs.

But he added that Google’s quantum processors had shown even faster improvement. “This is a race classical machines can’t win,” he said.

Chancellor’s move would damage cornerstone of UK economy, partners argue

Lawyers and accountants have criticised plans being considered by Rachel Reeves to make partners pay more tax through national insurance contributions, arguing that such a raid would hit a cornerstone of the UK economy.

The chancellor is preparing to add national insurance on to the tax bills of some UK professionals, which the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) think-tank has estimated would affect some 200,000 people and raise £1.9bn a year.

Most big law and accountancy firms in the UK operate as limited liability partnerships, which allows them to benefit from advantageous tax treatment despite securing high margins.

Scrapping the national insurance contribution exemption for such partnerships would increase the marginal tax rate for partners from about 47 per cent to 54 per cent, according to Dan Neidle at Tax Policy Associates.

He calculated it would reduce take-home pay for a partner at a large law firm earning £2mn from £1.072mn to £934,000.

“Law partnerships don’t get the same tax breaks for investment as other businesses but are now having to pay the same levels of tax,” said David McNeill, director of public affairs at the Law Society of England and Wales.

Corinne Staves, head of partnership at the law firm CM Murray, said Reeves’ proposal was “completely at odds with the government’s stated aims” to grow the professional services industry, one of the main drivers of the British economy.

Reeves said last week that taxing the wealthy would be “part of the story” as she seeks to fill a fiscal hole estimated by economists at between £20bn and £30bn.

But she insisted she would seek to “get the balance right” to ensure Britain attracted and retained wealth creators.

The chancellor’s decision to look at changing the tax treatment of LLPs in the November 26 Budget was first reported by the Times. The Treasury declined to comment on Budget “speculation”.

One senior partner at a top accountancy firm said the “annoying and expensive” proposals would probably lead to many firms moving away from their LLP structures and incorporating as companies.

Some high-earning partners might leave the UK altogether to avoid the tax, said Vipul Sheth, managing director of accounting outsourcing provider Advancetrack.

“Policymakers appear intent on undermining [the] competitiveness” of the services sector, he said, adding: “Increasing the brain drain seems a perverse way to increase tax collection.”

However, many professionals operating in regulated industries such as law have UK qualifications that may limit their ability to practise overseas.

Last week, Reeves accused some wealthy groups of “bleating” about higher taxes in her first Budget, notably on non-doms and private schools, in a message intended to reassure the Labour left that she has the rich in her sights.

The Treasury maintains that predictions of a wealth exodus from Britain as a result of tax changes to the non-dom regime announced last year were overblown, something that has emboldened the chancellor.

Staves at CM Murray said Reeves’ proposals were likely to have the biggest impact on mid-market and smaller firms, which are already struggling under increasing costs.

She warned that some such firms may collapse, creating “significant risks for consumers of professional services”.

The British Medical Association, the BMA, said the move “would deal a serious blow to doctors working in private practice within LLP structures” and suggested it could push up the cost of private health treatment.

Applying a new 15 per cent charge for LLPs would “substantially increase the tax rate for these doctors beyond 40 per cent, highly likely eroding the financial viability of many small, doctor-led practices”, it said.

Tom Margesson, tax partner at Travers Smith, said the measure would also negatively impact asset management firms, which are often structured as partnerships.

“From an asset management perspective, this would be extremely damaging — especially coming so soon after changes to carried interest taxation and the abolition of the non-dom regime,” he said.

“The risk to the UK’s status as an asset management hub is very real,” Margesson added. “If European HQs shift to the continent, we’re talking about much more than just partnership tax at stake.”

Adam Craggs, partner and head of tax disputes, regulatory and financial crime at RPC, a law firm, said that, in the current economic climate, “any additional cost burden on businesses will be difficult to absorb” for some firms.

Sean Bannister, chartered tax adviser at law firm Edwin Coe, said Reeves’ proposal “misunderstands partnerships”, which often “have their own capital at risk”.

“To target them again would deal a heavy blow to firms already managing rising costs,” he said.

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