Coronavirus infection rates are falling rapidly across the UK, easing pressure on the strained health service, according to official data. About 3.7mn people were infected with Covid-19 in the week ending April 16, according to Office for National Statistics estimates published on Friday. The latest infection figures are 15 per cent lower than those recorded
Belgian brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev is in talks to sell its stake in its Russian and Ukrainian joint venture to its Turkish partner, in a deal that could cause a $1.1bn hit to the world’s largest brewer. The maker of Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona is seeking to sell its non-controlling interest in joint venture AB
As state after state in America’s conservative heartland adopts reactionary abortion legislation, the beacon of the free world looks bizarrely out of kilter with even socially conservative neighbours like Mexico, where more progressive policies are being implemented. Abortion is already a divisive political issue in the US. It is becoming a business issue too. Companies
Landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s new book is, as befits its subject, a glorious cabinet of curiosities. Covering a wide selection of idiosyncratic gardeners and their equally singular gardens, it ranges from the early 17th to the early 20th centuries, taking in many of the stranger features of the English tradition of landscape design. Longstaffe-Gowan avoids
China’s renminbi has followed the Japanese yen’s downward path versus the US dollar. Both countries are sticking with loose monetary policies in sharp contrast to the trajectory of the US. But the similarities end there. Chinese companies have more to gain from a weaker currency. This week marked the renminbi’s biggest slide against the US
Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen are going head-to-head in a final appeal to voters as the French president tries to avoid an upset and secure an emphatic second-term victory in Sunday’s election. Macron has cemented his frontrunner status in recent days with his poll lead stabilising at around 55 per cent vs
Dozens of cities in China are in full or partial lockdown in response to the spread of Covid-19 cases, meaning that a population roughly the size of the US has been stuck at home for several weeks, often with limited access to food and medical care. Among those cities in lockdown, Shanghai has received the
Situated in 28,000 acres of Yorkshire Dales national park, beside the trout-filled River Wharfe, are the crumbling ruins of Bolton Priory. Next to it sits The Hall at Bolton Abbey, its extraordinary ancestral house. The estate’s ruins inspired paintings by the Romantics, including Landseer and Turner; in his poem “The White Doe of Rylstone”, Wordsworth
“But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction – what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?” So said Virginia Woolf at Girton College, Cambridge, in 1928, where she was giving a blistering lecture on why a woman couldn’t have written the 1,225-page War and Peace.
It never gets old: the lagoon, the water-lapped maze of streets and canals, the salt-worn, crumbling buildings and campi (squares) hidden away like secret pockets. Whether enshrouded in winter fog with impending high waters or under the warm, beating sun, Venice is truly unforgettable. Although I have called Tuscany home for 14 or so years,