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There has been hardly a better place to live through the Covid-19 pandemic than in Taiwan. With strict border controls, meticulous tracking and tracing and almost universal use of face masks, the country recorded among the lowest infection and death rates in the world, and achieved that even without lockdowns. However, that recipe for success

Professor Nick Bosanquet and Andrew Haldenby vividly highlight the impending emergency in world food stocks and the urgent need to increase arable planting (“Act now on food stocks to avert famine”, Letters, April 12). This is a need we in the UK are disregarding. The land in south Lincolnshire and much of East Anglia is

By Marta Bausells They had me at “Somewhere in northern Italy”. The phrase is scribbled over the opening shots of Call Me by Your Name: the protagonist Elio, played by Timothée Chalamet (pictured, above), pulling on a T-shirt as he looks out the window of the house of my dreams, watching Oliver (Armie Hammer), the

Korean Air’s chief executive has urged South Korean authorities to lift pandemic restrictions on air passengers, warning the country was opening “too slowly” to beat regional rivals in the race to capture pent-up demand. Walter Cho, chief executive and scion of the controlling family of the airline’s parent Hanjin Group, said bookings were full for

Memories of Britain’s 1982 war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands may have faded in London but the wounds in Buenos Aires remain fresh: an image of the islands in the blue and white of the Argentine flag was beamed on to the national congress building on the 40th anniversary this month of the military

Bank of America gave a bullish revenue outlook as the second-largest US lender reported better than expected earnings and brushed off recession concerns heightened by the war in Ukraine. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank expects net interest income, a closely watched metric that measures the profitability of a bank’s deposits, to jump about 20 per

The writer is head of the centre for financial crime and security studies at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank As the Russian war in Ukraine grinds through its second month, Britain’s foreign secretary faces a looming challenge in applying financial pressure on Moscow. Since the UK has already used its most powerful sanctions tools,

China’s economy grew faster than expected in the first quarter but official data revealed a recent contraction in consumer activity as lockdown measures to counter the spread of Covid-19 weighed on the country’s outlook. China’s gross domestic product rose 4.8 per cent compared with the same period a year earlier, after expanding by 4 per

Companies owned by rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have filed for bankruptcy after being hit by defamation lawsuits over Jones’s claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. Three companies, including Jones’s InfoWars media outlet, filed for Chapter 11 protection in Southern Texas on Sunday. InfoWars, which has been widely criticised for promoting

Officials in Lviv said seven people were killed in Russian missile strikes on the city in western Ukraine on Monday as Moscow’s brutal siege of Mariupol in the country’s south-east appeared to be entering its final stages. Andriy Sadovyy, Lviv’s mayor, reported “five targeted missile strikes” on the city, a haven for people fleeing violence in

A defiant Boris Johnson will on Tuesday face MPs for the first time since being fined over the “partygate” affair, with allies privately criticising the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the issue. The UK prime minister will apologise to MPs but will insist that he was not aware he was breaking his own Covid-19 lockdown rules;

Mexico’s opposition politicians have denied the country’s nationalist president the two-thirds majority he needed to change the constitution and implement a radical energy reform bill. The reform, which would have guaranteed state electricity group CFE 54 per cent of the market, spooked the private sector, opposition and the US government. Critics argued that it was

US stocks and bonds fluctuated on Monday morning as investors look ahead to a busy week of corporate earnings and speeches from Federal Reserve officials that may give further guidance on how aggressively policymakers will raise interest rates this year. The S&P 500 swung between gains and losses in thin trading as markets reopened from

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Chinese immigration consultants say inquiries from wealthy individuals trying to leave the country have surged following the lockdown of Shanghai, underscoring the mounting frustration with Beijing’s zero-Covid strategy. Calls about emigration have risen sharply this month, according to more than a dozen consultancies, following an outbreak of the Omicron coronavirus variant that led authorities to

China is America’s nemesis when it comes to economic espionage. About 80 per cent of all economic espionage prosecutions brought by the US Department of Justice allege conduct that would benefit the Chinese state. One 2017 estimate put the cost to the US of stolen trade secrets, pirated software and counterfeiting by China at between

Pay for FTSE 100 chief executives bounced back to pre-pandemic levels after increasing by a third in 2021, as some sectors experienced a post-Covid boom and companies measured performance against conservative targets. An analysis by PwC of the first 50 FTSE 100 companies to publish their 2021 remuneration reports — based on financial years ending

“I’m trying to be nice but sometimes it comes out horrible,” says movie producer Cameron O’Neill at one point in Chivalry, offering a crisp encapsulation of this lively comedy about Hollywood’s hopelessly maladroit efforts to adjust to a post-#MeToo world. The new Channel 4 series is something of a high-wire act. A comedy set against

Economists’ definitions of so-called safe assets — those that serve as a bolt hole for nervous money in crises — are often devoid of political content. This omission is historically under-informed. Safe assets, like reserve currencies and financial centres, have largely lost their pre-eminent status thanks to war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine serves as a

Janet Yellen, the US Treasury secretary, did something important and, for the most part, underreported last week. She relinked trade to values. In an address at the Atlantic Council in Washington, the secretary called for a new Bretton Woods framework and a revamp of the IMF and World Bank institutions, both of which are holding