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Looking back over some old reviews recently, I found one where I absolutely leathered a place because, despite the fantastic food, I objected strongly to their completely “natural” wine list. What’s embarrassingly clear, reading it four years later, is how the experience made me feel impotent, disempowered and slighted. If I’d previously been in denial

China said its armed forces had launched joint air and naval military exercises on Thursday on an unprecedented scale in six areas ringing Taiwan as Beijing sought to punish the country for hosting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. No immediate signs of the People’s Liberation Army drills could be detected in Taiwan, but Taipei issued

Growth in the UK is projected to be lower than its peers in the coming years, and inflation is expected to be higher and more persistent. But I think it is worth looking at an underpriced risk: that a muddled government response might accidentally set the already-ruined British state ablaze because ministers lack a clear

Megan Mohr was five years into her Apple career when, in 2013, a male colleague took advantage of her after a platonic night out drinking together. After the colleague drove her home and helped her inside, she briefly fell asleep before waking to the sound of clicking. The colleague had removed her shirt and bra.

Is Beyoncé still a pop star? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself over the past week as I walked around Brooklyn, where her latest album has been blasting steadily from cars and portable speakers, providing a soundtrack to late summer barbecues and block parties. I even witnessed one man playing Renaissance loudly through his

Chinese rhetoric was running so hot ahead of Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan this week that many people watching livestreams of the historic moment on state-controlled websites were surprised when her plane touched down at Taipei’s Songshan Airport. Why, some wondered, had the People’s Liberation Army Air Force not forced the US House of Representatives

Dozens of men and boys, covered head to toe in coal dust, stream in and out of the mine shafts bored deep into a mountain in northern Afghanistan. In the mines below Nahrain in Baghlan province, children as young as eight work as labourers, loading the fossil fuel on to donkeys which carry it to

Last week something unusual happened. A chief executive who presided over a UK corporate failure received a financial punishment. The case in question was particularly egregious: the collapse of construction company Carillion in 2018 with £7bn in liabilities and £29mn in cash. The fines for directors? At less than £400,000 a piece, maybe not so

Tesla rival Lucid Motors halved its 2022 production target on Wednesday, citing “extraordinary supply chain” challenges as it tries to ramp up production and meet “strong demand”. The California-based group, backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said 2022 production is now estimated between 6,000 and 7,000 cars, down from an earlier projection of 12,000

Foreign secretary Liz Truss, frontrunner in the race to become the next British prime minister, said she would look to change the Bank of England’s mandate to ensure it controlled inflation. Speaking at a hustings of Conservative party members in Cardiff on Wednesday, she argued that inflation had been caused by “huge” supply side shocks

SoftBank has raised as much as $22bn in cash from deals that would sharply reduce its stake in Alibaba over the coming years, as the Japanese investor responds to a market downturn that has ravaged its technology portfolio. The group, led by billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, has this year carried out the sale of about

Motoring organisations on Wednesday called on BP and the big four supermarkets to cut their petrol prices and provide greater help to Britons struggling with the cost of living crisis. The AA claimed BP — which unveiled its highest quarterly profits for 14 years on Tuesday — was charging “what they can get away with”

Opec and its allies have agreed one of the smallest oil production increases in the group’s history as Saudi Arabia attempts to appease western allies without using up all its unused capacity. The increase agreed on Wednesday of just 100,000 barrels a day, or 0.1 per cent of global demand, is likely to cause disappointment

Hefty recent interest rate rises by the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank highlight the concern among central bankers that high inflation could become entrenched and spiral further beyond their control. With many advanced economies facing the spectre of recession, monetary policymakers are grappling with an unenviable choice: raise rates gradually, which will more

Thousands of crypto accounts linked to the Solana blockchain have been “drained” in a blow to one of the biggest networks in the digital asset market. Solana and several other platforms linked to the blockchain were on Wednesday investigating an apparent hack that affected at least 7,767 digital wallets, the computer programs that store traders’

Security officers said it had been “hot and hectic” at London’s Heathrow airport this summer. While airline and airport executives try to pin the blame on each other for summer travel chaos, the officers are dealing with the fallout from cancelled flights and big queues at Heathrow’s terminals — in teams that are inexperienced and

Nancy Pelosi pledged an “ironclad” US commitment to Taiwan during a historic visit to the country on Wednesday that has infuriated China and raised warnings that military manoeuvres Beijing announced in retaliation would amount to a blockade of the island. The comments from the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, made during a meeting

Boris Johnson sometimes joked that he dreamt of shaking up the Treasury by making John Redwood, the former cabinet minister and Thatcherite radical, his chancellor of the exchequer. It stayed a dream. His first two chancellors were orthodox fiscal conservatives. Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed Johnson as prime minister, is given to similarly puckish musings.

European equities slipped in morning trade on Wednesday after hawkish comments from the Federal Reserve clouded market hopes that the US central bank would ease the pace of rate rises to counter an economic slowdown. The Stoxx 600 slipped 0.1 per cent in morning trading, with London’s FTSE 100 up 0.2 per cent and Germany’s

Just after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan, she published an article arguing that her controversial visit was critical to demonstrating American support for the country as it faces mounting pressure from China. “In the face of the Chinese Communist party’s accelerating aggression, our congressional delegation’s visit should be seen as an unequivocal

In the spring of 1992, Japan’s senior intelligence officials made a fairly standard decision to deny entry to Reverend Moon Sun-myung, the late founder of South Korea’s Unification Church, on the grounds that he had previously served in US prison for tax evasion. Shortly afterwards, though, the religious leader sailed through security checks to enter