I am sitting in a homely pizzeria in Jokkmokk, a Swedish town tucked just north of the Arctic Circle, talking to Anders Sunna, a Sámi artist whose small studio is a couple of blocks away. The Sámis are the indigenous people of the far north of the Scandinavian peninsula, whose presence also stretches into north-western
Gideon Rachman’s “Strongman syndrome” article (Life & Arts, April 2) damns Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, by crude association with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan claiming “even in the UK, Boris Johnson’s plan for ‘Global Britain’ draws on nostalgia for a period when Britain was a great imperial power rather
There are many reasons to expand UK universities but subsidising young people to make themselves poorer is not one of them (Opinion, April 7). It should be unconscionable to university leaders that nearly a fifth of graduates earn less than if they had not gone at all and nearly half of recent graduates are in
New York police say they are seeking a “person of interest” in connection with an attack on a Brooklyn subway train in which 10 commuters were shot and at least 13 more were injured. James Essig, the New York Police Department’s chief of detectives, on Tuesday evening described the shooter as a heavyset black man
With thousands of protesters on the streets of Colombo, soaring food and fuel prices and this week the first-ever suspension of government bond payments, Sri Lanka’s escalating economic crisis has shaken the governing Rajapaksa family’s grip on power. But while demonstrators accuse Gotabaya Rajapaksa of mismanaging the economy, the president’s elder brother, prime minister Mahinda
Count me among the minority of Americans, according to Niels Erich, who believe we should not risk nuclear war to defend Ukraine (“Trump in wartime — that’s a thought to conjure with!”, Letters, April 8). Those who argue that direct attacks on Russia using a no-fly zone, medium range missiles and Nato fighter aircraft pose
Gideon Rachman (“We need to think about a Le Pen victory”, Opinion, April 12) is spot on with his claim that “rather than dismissing Le Pen’s chances, it is time to think seriously about what her possible victory would mean for France and beyond”. Her victory, if she kept her word, would most certainly mean,
The formation of the International Sustainability Standards Board and the publication of their new proposals (Report, April 1) is a welcome step in a landscape of well-intentioned but increasingly uncoordinated, complex and nationalised taxonomies. As the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report once again reiterates, the time is indeed “now or never” for action,
The US will extend a public transportation mask mandate for 15 days while the country’s top public health agency monitors a recent rise in coronavirus cases. The federal mandate, which requires travellers on public transport including aeroplanes, trains and buses to wear masks, was set to expire on April 18. “In order to assess the
The governor of Texas is facing growing calls to abandon a vehicle inspection programme that has led to blockades and long queues at Mexico border crossings, threatening billions of dollars in trade at a time when supply chains are already under strain. Mexican truck drivers have blockaded border crossings since Monday in protest against the
The World Trade Organization has cut its goods trade growth forecast for this year by about a third to 3 per cent, warning that the decline in commodity exports caused by the Ukraine war could cause mass hunger in developing countries. The Geneva-based body revised predicted growth in goods trade volumes down from 4.7 per
Two of the most influential proxy advisers have counselled Credit Suisse shareholders to vote against a motion to absolve executives and board members from blame for the multiple scandals afflicting the Swiss lender. On Tuesday, ISS and Glass Lewis both released reports that said they would not recommend discharging the board and top executives from
Fears about the outlook for global economic growth among large institutional investors have risen to their highest level in more than a quarter of a century, as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its third month. A net 71 per cent of fund managers in March said they expected the global economy to weaken over the
It is springtime for Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour party is readying for another by-election. It has yet to make a by-election gain in this parliament but this is a fight it has a chance of winning. In Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, Starmer is hoping to kick off the party’s fightback in its former
Before the pandemic, New Yorkers John Newton and Marc Perrotta bought a one-time dental office in the Mexican city of Mérida, about 300km west of Cancún. The city’s laid-back lifestyle fit nicely with their plan to relocate from Brooklyn. “We wanted to leave New York and had thought about Canada and even Germany,” says Newton,
Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia is exiting the Russian market permanently, becoming the latest western company to distance itself from the Kremlin and plan for a future in which sanctions persist. “For us, it has been clear since the beginning of the invasion that it is not going to be possible to continue our presence
Sri Lanka’s finance ministry has suspended payments on its government bonds, breaking what it called its “unblemished record of external debt service since independence in 1948” in a deepening economic and currency crisis. In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said keeping up with repayments had “become impossible”, adding that “although the government has taken
In normal times this would be game over. In the longer term it probably still is. The news that Boris Johnson has been fined for the breaching of lockdown rules he imposed on the nation ought ordinarily to be enough to finish him off. It is a shocking event. The fact that his chancellor, Rishi
Investors keen on the listing of the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority bought up the shares by the bucketful on its first day of trading Tuesday. Dewa, as it is known, had already increased the size of its share offering twice before settling on $6.1bn for 18 per cent of the equity. That made it
In the animal kingdom, fluorescent colours come as a warning – take the electric-bright spots on poison dart frogs signalling their toxic exteriors, or the luminescent glow of the blue-ringed octopus that cautions against its deadly bite. The dazzling hues seen on the spring/summer runways this season are more affable. At Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton’s cerulean wool suit