It is difficult to comprehend the world Michael Moritz inhabits regarding his position on the proposed online sales tax in the UK (“An online sales tax will be a further blight on the high street”, Opinion, May 16). Whether it is convenience, economy in the use of scarce time, lower prices (partly because of the

When a defecting South Korean maritime official tried to swim across the border in 2020, the North Korean navy shot him and burnt his body at sea for fear he was contaminated with coronavirus. Five months later, a group of Russian diplomats and their families were forced to propel themselves and their luggage across the

Pio Abad’s political art is almost in his blood. The child of activists during the dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in the Philippines, he takes items of the Marcoses’ plunder — jewellery, silverware, Old Masters of tenuous provenance — and reworks them as postcards, drawings, augmented reality. It is a practice of history and

UK consumer confidence has dropped to its lowest level for nearly 50 years amid the cost of living crisis, according to a survey, fuelling concerns that the economy will slide into recession in 2022. The UK consumer confidence index fell 2 percentage points to minus 40 in May, its lowest since records began in 1974,

The world feels more dangerous today — especially from a European perspective. Now Edward Luce’s “The world from Washington” (Life & Arts, May 14) squarely adds China to our worries. Luce’s important article outlines the growing anti-China hawkishness in Washington. Can someone now write an article to explain exactly why China is an “evil empire”?

While higher interest rates have been the prime reason investors have been getting out of US tech stocks, spare a thought for the Chinese companies and their stockholders, hit by a perfect storm of negative sentiment. Already beset by US sanctions and delistings, and damaged by supply chain issues and Covid lockdowns, the coup de

Shares in Chinese technology companies led declines across the Asia-Pacific region in the wake of Wall Street’s worst day since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic as concerns mounted over global growth. Hong Kong-listed shares in Tencent fell as much as 8.6 per cent on Thursday after the Chinese internet group reported its slowest

The US Senate approved $40bn in military, economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine on Thursday, as Russia continues its offensive in the country’s Donbas region. The vote passed 86-11 after a week-long delay and despite opposition from a handful of self-described America First Republicans. US president Joe Biden is expected to quickly sign the measure,

First seize the airwaves. The old playbook, deployed in countless coups across Asia and Africa, is back in vogue. Authorities in Hong Kong froze the assets and arrested top journalists of Apple Daily, a gossipy pro-democracy newspaper, triggering its demise. Now Russian authorities have seized and raided Google’s domestic bank account, tipping its subsidiary in

UK competition regulators have warned that the €13bn merger of French waste and water groups Veolia and Suez risks driving up council bills in Britain because the deal will cut the choice available to local authorities. Paris-based Veolia agreed to buy Suez in April 2021 after an acrimonious pursuit that erupted into a public dispute

Royal Mail has said there is a “more urgent” need for the company to adapt to changing consumer behaviour after the pandemic as it reported a slide in profits and warned it would lift prices to counter the effects of climbing inflation. The UK postal service pointed to “significant headwinds” ahead as it highlighted the

Sir Bufton Tufton, the archetypal British Conservative MP, is deeply unhappy. He did not spend decades advocating free market economics to see such a dire situation visited on the country’s economy. Growth is anaemic, inflation rampant, the tax burden at its highest in six decades and every corner of the public realm has an insatiable

One thing to start: US officials are pushing tariffs or a price cap on Russian crude to help break an impasse in the EU over new oil sanctions. Welcome back to Energy Source! With fuel stockpiles expected to continue dropping, we have a dire warning from JPMorgan that US petrol prices could top $6 a

On the eve of the publication of her newest novel in English, Jokha Alharthi is nervous. Not about the reception of her work, Bitter Orange Tree, but over the possibility that I will misrepresent her. “I’ve seen shocking headlines [about me] put on an article”, she says. “It makes me hold back from doing interviews.”

Art came into Lonnie Holley’s life, improbably and unannounced, when he was 29 years old, following a family tragedy. He made two tombstones for a nephew and niece who died in a house fire in his home city of Birmingham, Alabama. In the process of their manufacture, he unexpectedly found himself infused with a rare

The movie in which the two best friends in the middle of sharp-witted comedy Emergency would want to appear is simple: a riotous college romp. After all, they are the perfect odd couple for it: Sean (RJ Cyler) a hardcore thrill-seeker, his buddy Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) bookish and morally diligent. Marking their graduation with

Target yesterday echoed a warning from rival Walmart the day before that rising costs would hit its annual profits, triggering the biggest one-day decline in its share price since the stock market crash of 1987. Shares in Walmart, the world’s largest bricks-and-mortar retailer, fell a further 6.8 per cent yesterday after losing 11 per cent

British Airways owner IAG has agreed to order 50 Boeing 737 Max jets, handing the US aerospace group a much-needed boost as it struggles to overcome a series of production delays to its core programmes. IAG on Thursday said the order for the narrow-bodied aircraft was worth $6.25bn at list prices, but that it had

Sri Lanka’s central bank has confirmed the country has missed a deadline for foreign debt repayments, the first sovereign default in the Asia-Pacific region this century, according to Moody’s. A 30-day grace period for missed interest payments on two international sovereign bonds expired on Wednesday, forcing Sri Lanka into what some analysts called a “hard”

An internal staff memo from the desk of Greg Peters, co-chief investment officer of the $890bn asset manager PGIM Fixed Income, reaches our inbox. It makes some timely points so we’re sharing the highlights. Peters has been around the block and knows his stuff. Despite being known internally for somewhat jazzy jackets, he has helped