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We’ve had Tokyo Vice, now it’s time for some Kyoto wholesomeness. The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House is a charming new Japanese-language series created for Netflix by Palme d’Or-winning director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters). Based on a popular manga, The Makanai captures the quiet, quaint and codified existence of the trainee geisha (or maiko) living

“Cocaine is on the table,” Damiano David sings in his slurred, nasal voice on Måneskin’s new album. The line, pun unintended, cheekily alludes to the controversy when he and his Italian bandmates won Eurovision in 2021. During a cutaway shot in the televised ceremony, millions of viewers misinterpreted the singer’s innocent attempt to locate broken

UBS is planning to pick off disgruntled dealmakers from investment banking boutiques, as the Swiss lender looks to bolster its capabilities in mergers and acquisitions while competitors lay off staff. The bank has not hired as aggressively as Wall Street rivals in recent years, but it is preparing to lure strong candidates with attractive packages,

David Rossi was sitting at home in Rhode Island one night in early 2022, his prime having all but passed him by. His days as an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator, of Florida cruise ships, of $2,000-a-week cash payouts, of hanging out with Tom Jones and meeting Elvis, all the girls, the glamour — he’d left it

Your correspondent Peter Campbell reports (“Tesla reduces prices across Europe and US by up to 20%”, Report, January 14) that Tesla has cut its electric vehicle prices across Europe and US in an attempt to increase demand — at a time when EV charging facilities are failing people, putting people off the EV option. Two

America had Ryan Gosling in The Big Short, breaking down the 2008 financial crisis from the Wall Street office of Deutsche Bank. Britain has Rory Kinnear singing karaoke Whitesnake in the Duck and Drake, Burnley. The movie is Bank of Dave, an assertively genial comedy based on the true story of Dave Fishwick. He was,

South Africa’s rolling blackouts have ruined a hot summer for Soweto Creamery, a gourmet ice cream business in Johannesburg’s largest township praised by President Cyril Ramaphosa as a start-up forged in the pandemic. Despite high demand for sweet treats such as the Chocolate Overload and Caramel Canyon, owner Thando Makhubu has burnt cash running a

A new Eden Project for the north of England is among more than 100 schemes to have won government funding from the delayed £2.1bn second phase of the levelling-up fund. The planned eco-attraction in Morecambe, on the Lancashire coast, will receive £50mn for local capital projects, as part of the Conservative party’s “levelling-up” policy, an

Children like facts. That is a fact. I’ve long realised that if mine tell me something about animals, however weird it is, they will usually be correct. When my seven-year old daughter told me the World Cup final lasted as long as a sperm whale could hold its breath, I didn’t argue (although I googled

China’s tech stocks have staged a $700bn rally as the country reopens and a regulatory clampdown on the sector loosens, drawing the attention of international asset managers who fled the market in recent years. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech index, which is stacked with Chinese companies, has soared almost 60 per cent from its lows

Twice a year, in winter and summer, menswear nerds turn their hungry eyes to Florence, for Pitti Uomo. It is nominally a trade show, but what really matters is not what goes on at shows or in the exhibition halls, but what attendees wear on the street. I should note, in order to make my

US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen will meet Chinese vice-premier Liu He in Zurich this week, in a move that signals Washington and Beijing’s commitment to improving ties between the two nations despite simmering tensions over trade and Taiwan. The US Treasury said that Yellen would meet Liu, China’s top economic official, in Switzerland on Wednesday

Bayer has said it is shifting the focus of its pharmaceutical business to the US and away from Europe and the UK, where governments are making “big mistakes” in how they manage health budgets. Stefan Oelrich, head of the German conglomerate’s drugs business, told the Financial Times that Europe was becoming “innovation unfriendly” because policymakers

A New York oil dynasty that was a client of the legendary fraudster Bernard Madoff and lost billions in the demise of Enron has been embroiled in the collapse of FTX, according to court documents. Investment firms for the Belfer family, whose name sits above galleries at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, were included

It was easy to lose money in stocks in 2022. Even the most sophisticated investment managers found it hard to dodge the double-digit falls in most major equity markets. Contestants in FT Money’s stockpicking contest suffered the same fate. Only a quarter of nearly 1,200 readers and journalists who joined the annual battle of financial

Prince Harry is not the only royal spare with a problem. Minor members of Scandinavian royalty who are unlikely to become king or queen have been causing ructions with behaviour seen as undermining the monarchy in countries with a more modest style of royalty than the UK’s grandiose version. In Norway, Princess Märtha Louise, fourth

Dear reader, The western world’s gerontocracy scored another set of victories this week. Three bosses, all in their seventies, made headlines with their succession planning, or lack of it. All three seem intent on remaining in positions of power for the foreseeable future. WWE, the US company that produces professional wrestling events, is stuck in

Sri Lanka plans to reduce the size of its bloated military by about a third by 2024 as the government of the bankrupt island struggles to contain a devastating financial crisis. More than a decade after the end of a brutal civil war, Sri Lanka maintains one of the world’s largest armed forces, on a

Good morning. Famous last words, but . . . are we reaching the end of the beginning in the Northern Ireland Protocol stand-off? Our correspondent in Belfast parses this week’s flurry of diplomacy. And I bring you up to speed with the adventures of Andrej Babiš, the former Czech premier who began the week awaiting a fraud verdict,

Type any sentence, such as “Ginger cat looking wistfully over a view of Istanbul from the top of a minaret while the sun sets, anime style” into a website or app, and you’ll get an uncanny visual approximation created entirely by AI — in less than a minute, with no input from humans. Will AI-generated art