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Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. This week, we’re revisiting an episode from last year. Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s largest healthcare companies, is facing thousands of lawsuits from people alleging they got cancer from using one of their oldest

The largest eurozone lenders are exposed to “spillovers” of stress from outside the banking system, relying on so-called shadow banks for more than 15 per cent of their funding, the European Central Bank has warned. The rapid growth of shadow banks — a group that includes insurers, hedge funds, asset managers and pension funds —

By Deborah Nash In 1738, the Scottish politician and composer Sir John Clerk of Penicuik visited Studley Royal House and remarked how the vast herds of deer there appeared to resemble “a moving forrest [sic]”. Nearly 300 years later, the original stately home has gone but fallow, red and Manchurian sika deer can still be

After reaching a deal on the US debt ceiling with President Joe Biden over the weekend, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy now has to quell a revolt from the Republican party. McCarthy defended the pact yesterday ahead of a high-stakes vote expected this Wednesday in the lower chamber of Congress, just days before the US is

James Brydon wrote this clue for this month’s FT News Puzzle about the French economy minister’s steamy novel Fugue américaine: Burn Molière plays about a writer of erotica (5,2,5) * “Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the answer fit into the grid,” says James, whose puzzle under his FT handle of Buccaneer, is published today. “I was

After more than 30 years in the public eye, Australia’s best-known indigenous journalist has stepped back from broadcasting after facing racial abuse, sending shockwaves through the country as it gears up for a referendum this year on enshrining indigenous rights in the constitution. Stan Grant, an author and a journalist, said he would stand back

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University and served on the US National Security Council staff from 2009-2015 A new phase in US-China strategic competition may be opening up. After months of acrimony and stasis, contact between the two countries is finally resuming. The challenge for Washington and Beijing is to capitalise on this

The confessional may be a genre stretching back more than 1,600 years, but it was in 1992 that Wang Xiaobo made it his own. Golden Age is the Beijing native’s semi-autobiographical account of the final decades of the 20th century in China — a no-punches-pulled satire in a country where few are written, let alone published — now

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority is probing the market for sustainable loans, following concerns that the environmental targets in such deals are too easy for companies to meet. The watchdog has started interviewing bankers and borrowers about loans that potentially reward borrowers with lower rates but fail to have a significant environmental impact. It is

Scotland’s most senior police officer has admitted that the force is “institutionally racist and discriminatory” and that acknowledging it was a crucial step in winning public confidence and building an inclusive service. Sir Iain Livingstone’s comments at a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority board, which oversees policing in the country, prompted calls from opposition

Management candidates at listed Italian state-controlled companies may be selected by executive search companies, but the final choices are ultimately made by ruling politicians and typically their allies are selected. Experts and investors regard this decades-long system as a blight on good corporate governance, but until recently it had rarely come into question.  Every three

The spirit of George Floyd is never far from Bridgette Stewart, an anti-violence activist from a group, Agape Movement, that tends George Floyd Square in Minneapolis. But it came rushing back to Stewart earlier this month when another black man, Jordan Neely, died in circumstances eerily similar to Floyd’s. Homeless and mentally ill, Neely was

Citigroup has said it will spin off its Mexican retail bank through an initial public offering, abandoning a plan hatched early last year to sell the unit. The US lender plans to completely separate its Banamex division, which has 38,000 employees and is one of the largest consumer banking franchises in Mexico, by the middle

Federal Reserve officials concluded the need to further lift interest rates had become “less certain” as economic risks had increased, although the US central bank remained open to additional rate rises if warranted by the data, according to an account of their latest meeting. Minutes from the May meeting, when the Federal Open Market Committee delivered

On the surface, UK inflation in 2023 is becoming similar to the problem in the 1970s, when people talked about a “British disease” making the country the “sick man” of Europe. Stubbornly high inflation that eclipses rates in other countries. Index-linked contracts amplifying price pressures. The authorities struggling to control household costs. And wages following

The UK’s largest asset manager Legal & General has thrown its weight behind a landmark debt deal by Ecuador, in a sign of growing investor interest in swaps that shrink countries’ interest payments while raising money for environmental conservation. A unit of Legal & General Investment Management snapped up $250mn of the record-setting Galápagos deal

Slow grid connections and delays over the issuing of permits risk holding back the development of renewable energy in the UK and further afield, the boss of Abu Dhabi renewable energy group Masdar has warned. Mohamed Al Ramahi, chief executive of the state-backed company, said the group faced a struggle to “execute as fast as

Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. China’s semiconductor industry fears Japanese curbs on exports of crucial chipmaking equipment are stricter than US limits, Meta has been hit with a €1.2bn fine by the EU for privacy violations, and the Adani Group is

Heavy is the head that wears the coif in Firebrand, which puts Alicia Vikander’s iconoclastic Catherine Parr at the centre of Tudor history even as Jude Law’s grotesque Henry VIII does his best to smother her. It’s a remarkable physical performance from Law, who spares us nothing, especially in grunting bedroom scenes in which Old

Bank of England officials hope the ratchet between higher prices and wages will soon moderate as official figures on Wednesday are set to show a large drop in the headline inflation rate. The central bank is expecting the annual rate of consumer price inflation to drop almost 2 percentage points from 10.1 per cent in