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Joe Biden will send a clear message to US allies in Asia of his commitment to security in the region during a visit to South Korea and Japan this week despite his administration’s focus on the war in Ukraine. On his first trip to Asia as US president, Biden will spend five days in Seoul

An interesting little factoid out from Man Group earlier this week on the recent bout of market mayhem (our emphasis below): Since 1960, there have been 44 individual instances of the S&P 500 index enduring five or more consecutive down weeks. Since 1973, US Treasuries have had 31 such losing streaks lasting at least five

Plots appear twice on Apple TV Plus: first as farce then as a tragedy-laden thriller. Four months ago the streaming service launched The Afterparty: an ensemble murder-mystery parody that centred on a group who find themselves implicated when a former classmate is killed after a school reunion. Arriving on the platform this week is a

Since the financial crisis, corporate lawyers have aspired to build the ultimate ironclad merger contract that keeps buyers with cold feet from backing out. The “bulletproof” modern deal agreement now faces one of its biggest tests, as Elon Musk, the Tesla boss and richest person in the world, openly entertains the possibility of ditching his

The writer is dean of the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po The emerging narrative from the war in Ukraine is that the surge in geopolitical risk will compound existing dissatisfaction with the global trade system and lead to fragmentation. Security will trump efficiency. Integration with like-minded partners will replace multilateralism. This narrative is neither

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: Ukraine’s nationalists and the Azov battalion [MUSIC PLAYING] Gideon RachmanHello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. In this week’s edition, we’re looking at Ukrainian nationalism. Throughout this conflict Vladimir Putin has insisted that

Marsh McLennan is arranging insurance for a controversial east African oil pipeline, putting the world’s largest broker at the centre of a project that has been shunned by major banks and prompted a backlash from its own staff. The $5bn East Africa Crude oil pipeline (Eacop), which will run from Uganda to the Tanzanian coast,

“I can take living in the ghetto, where there’s broken glass, prostitutes, empty lots and no prospects across a seven-mile radius, and make birthday cakes out of it!” says Chicago-born rapper Lupe Fiasco. “We take the least and make the most out of it . . . that’s what hip-hop’s sweet spot is.” Listening to the 40-year-old (real name

The writer is chief investment officer of Muddy Waters Capital There’s a line in the comedy film Zoolander in which the protagonist, a vacuous and vain model, confesses to having considered volunteering to help underprivileged children. He then declares that “just thinking about it was the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had”. And it seems the

In late April, Shanghai’s Tongji University students found rotting pork inside a meal box delivered several weeks into the city’s Omicron outbreak. The maggot-infested meal struck a chord with the disgruntled Shanghai public weeks into an indefinite lockdown without access to basic food and medical supplies. One student penned an angry response that quickly became

Has the auction market hit its peak? The running total of the New York evening sales of fine art — and a dinosaur skeleton — was $1.9bn at the time of writing, within estimates and potentially with another half a billion dollars to come. Across just three evenings, 33 works sold for more than $10mn

As a teenager in the late 1970s, Kave Quinn dressed in black plastic bin bags. She would hack out a neckline and armholes with scissors, patch and shape them with safety pins and maybe add a belt and fishnets, until they looked something like a dress. Quinn remembers doing all this at her home in

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Why Ukraine and Russia are fighting over a teeny island Marc FilippinoGood morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, May 19, and this is your FT News Briefing. US retailers warned about their earnings and Wall Street crumbled. A tiny island in

“Without you, we’d just be Netflix,” Fox Sports chief executive Eric Shanks told advertisers this week in lower Manhattan, where a succession of Fox executives touted their programming — and took jabs at the video streaming pioneer. Shanks’s quip spoke to a dramatic turn of fortunes at Netflix as its once-raging subscriber growth reverses and

Sweden must cut its ties with a Syrian Kurdish militia or Turkey will continue to block its application to Nato, Ankara’s ambassador to Stockholm has warned amid a deepening crisis over the Scandinavian country’s attempt to join the transatlantic defence alliance. Emre Yunt told the Financial Times that severing links with the People’s Protection Units

One invite to start: Our second DD: Dialogues online event is just around the corner. Join FT columnist Simon Kuper on May 25 at 15.30 BST/10:30 EST for a conversation with journalist David de Jong on his groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions from the horrors of the Third Reich.

The House of Shades Almeida Theatre, London A tight-knit group of people caught up in vast socio-economic changes — it’s a scenario that has given us some of the greatest plays ever written: Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Lynn Nottage’s Sweat . . . That same approach drives two new plays just opened

In 1980, the M-19 guerrilla movement stormed a diplomatic reception in Bogotá and kidnapped US envoy Diego Asencio, holding him and several other ambassadors hostage for two months before flying them to Cuba and releasing them. It was one of a number of audacious stunts pulled by the guerrillas in a crusade against the Colombian

Three weeks ago, I used this column to explain why I was still not taking crypto seriously, despite the number of allegedly very serious and grown-up investors getting involved in it. Since then, the market has crashed by about 30 per cent, with many so-called “stablecoins” proving themselves to be anything but. Bitcoin’s value has

Tatyana, her husband and three children escaped the horrors of Mariupol several weeks ago, but relief only began to sink in when they made it to Estonia with help from an ad hoc network of Russian volunteers. The network, among them antiwar activists and general volunteers, is operating largely through word of mouth and groups