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The entire interior of the Komische Oper has been swathed in white. Netting hangs from the ceiling and over the sides of the circles. The auditorium seats have been removed and replaced with a gigantic white platform, slightly fluffy, like Halloween spiderwebs or the fake snow of an Antipodean shopping-mall Santa. Susanne Moser and Philip

Good morning. Twice on Friday the S&P 500 fell through its June lows of 3,666 (technical analysts will note the presence of the number of the beast). Twice it rebounded, and the index closed at 3,693. That the old lows held might be reassuring, but the smell of fear is unmistakable. Email us: robert.armstrong@ft.com and

Hello and welcome to the working week. Or should that be the voting week? The next seven days certainly has a bumper crop of elections. On Monday we will be picking over the fallout from Italy’s lurch to the right after the completion of a bad-tempered election campaign. The Financial Times got in early with

At a time when everything is getting more expensive, including food, is it possible to pull together an interesting dinner-party main for £10? We challenged four chefs behind four of the most talked-about restaurants to open in London in the past year to try. The rules: the recipe must feed four people; the ingredients cannot

Good evening A borrow and hope Budget on a scale not seen since 1972. That was the verdict of economics editor Chris Giles on UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s debt-financed package of £45bn in tax cuts and other measures which aims to shift the country from a “vicious cycle of stagnation into a virtuous cycle of

Voting began on Friday in four provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine in hastily convened referendums on whether to join Russia, to the delight of pro-Moscow officials and the disgust of those residents whose allegiance still lies with Ukraine. For the Russian-installed officials marshalling the vote, the event is a milestone in the Kremlin’s full-scale

UK consumer confidence has defied expectations of an improvement and fallen to a new all-time low, as households struggle under the pressure of the cost of living crisis. The consumer confidence index, a closely watched measure of how people view their personal finances and wider economic prospects, dropped 5 percentage points to minus 49 in

The humanoid robot Tesla is expected to unveil this month is an expert bit of stagecraft. Optimus, billed as the future of labour, is sci-fi come to life. But futuristic robots are not what investors in the electric car maker care about. Production in China, progress at the new factory in Germany, material supply and

UK prime minister Liz Truss has left open the door to joining a new European grouping proposed by France’s president Emmanuel Macron, intended to bolster regional co-operation in the face of Russian aggression. Truss discussed the group, tentatively called the European Political Community, with Macron in New York on Tuesday and has asked for more

Morning. Vladimir Putin has today called up hundreds of thousands of reservists in a dramatic escalation of the six-month conflict in Ukraine. In a televised address to announce the “partial mobilisation”, the Russian president accused the west of using “nuclear blackmail” and vowed to use “all means at our disposal” to defend “the territorial integrity”

I find myself increasingly puzzled at the use of the term “weaponisation” to describe Russia’s approach to EU gas supplies. The inference seems to be that this is something entirely different in nature to the sanctions strategy deployed by the US and EU (Report, Special Reports, September 20). Chambers Dictionary defines a weapon as something

The writer is director of Carnegie Europe A far-right political party with roots in the post-fascist movement is likely to become Italy’s largest political grouping after elections on Sunday. The Brothers of Italy are set to surge from under 5 per cent of the vote to up to 25 per cent or more. If the

Just two days before her death, Queen Elizabeth II was photographed at Balmoral Castle in what would be her last official engagement. The 96-year-old monarch dressed in her country-casual look to meet Liz Truss, her 15th prime minister, and stood before a blazing fire in a grey cardigan and pleated skirt. It was a depiction

US president Joe Biden pledged to boost federal support for Puerto Rico yesterday after a hurricane caused flooding and left more than 1mn people without electricity. In a call to Pedro Pierluisi, the governor of the US territory, from Air Force One, Biden said the number of support personnel on the ground to help with

A spate of brutal attacks has fuelled concerns of rising political violence in Brazil ahead of presidential elections next month. Authorities are on alert following the murders in recent weeks of two supporters of race frontrunner, leftwing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by backers of incumbent rightwing leader Jair Bolsonaro. The assailant shouted

Brussels is seeking emergency powers to force member states to stockpile key products and break contracts during a crisis such as the war in Ukraine or the coronavirus pandemic, according to plans revealed by the European Commission on Monday. The legislation, which intends to facilitate public procurement of critical goods and services, would deter the

The Biden administration’s abrupt withdrawal of subsidies for South Korean electric vehicles is threatening to undermine trust in the US, Seoul’s trade minister has warned, as trade tensions grow between the allies. Seoul is furious that EVs manufactured by Hyundai in South Korea will be excluded from generous consumer tax credits contained in the Inflation

Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. The UK has experienced an unprecedented week of constitutional upheaval with new national and political leadership. We discuss the death and mourning of Queen Elizabeth II, the arrival of King Charles III and what it all

US mortgage rates hit 6 per cent this week, the highest level in 14 years, adding to fears about the housing market. But Americans live in a socialist paradise. Homeowners are shielded from rising interest rates by 30-year government-backed fixed deals. When rates fall, the mortgage can be refinanced, locking in cheaper payments. When rates

SÃO PAULO SATURDAY AUGUST 20 On an uncommonly cold Saturday morning in subtropical São Paulo, people wrapped in coats and hats pour out of metro stations and buses, drawn to the beat of samba drums emanating from the historic but rundown centre of the largest city in the Americas. A dozen friends, most wearing something