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As the virus spread across the world and authorities started imposing lockdowns, problems became obvious. There was resistance to the closure of religious services, few people were keen to postpone weddings and funerals could not wait. Young singles wanted to party. Many people disliked wearing masks. And parents were tearing their hair out as schools

The UK government will miss its manifesto target of building an additional 300,000 homes a year by the mid 2020s and is imposing unrealistic goals on English cities, business groups and councils have warned. To meet the pledge the 20 largest cities would need to increase their existing home-building targets by 35 per cent. But

When Jane’s husband died in a climbing accident in the Alps, she faced not only shock and grief but a daunting pile of paperwork. “It’s hard . . . having been married 43 years then all of a sudden your partner is not there any more and the world is on your shoulders,” says Jane, 72, who lives in

Reading Gideon Rachman’s column “Patriots vs globalists is the new battlefield”(Opinion, April 19) it occurs to me, as an economist, that nationalism vs globalisation resembles a typical decision in finance. It is a trade-off between risk and return. Nationalists, as in economic autarky, seek to avoid the risks from problems beyond their control but at

Martin Sandbu’s articles on the reconstruction of Ukraine and its EU accession (“Ukraine needs an ambitious new Marshall Plan from Europe”, Opinion, April 11; and “Kyiv and the west must start planning for the peace they want now”, Opinion, March 14) are full of insight. As he says, there must be gains to be made

The World Health Organization has urged pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer to be more transparent about the pricing of its antiviral drug Paxlovid after recommending the medicine to treat Covid-19. The global health body, under new guidelines, recommended Paxlovid for people who developed mild or moderate symptoms but were at the highest risk of developing a severe

Boris Johnson will offer increased defence co-operation to Narendra Modi during talks in New Delhi on Friday, in a bid to break India’s reliance on Russian weaponry. The UK prime minister will hold out the prospect of closer military ties in talks with his Indian counterpart on the final day of his visit. He has

Boris Johnson has vowed that he will not retreat on his green agenda in spite of claims by parts of the Conservative party that the cost of developing renewable energy is driving up electricity bills. The UK prime minister, while on a trip to India, said the government was tackling the cost of living crisis

Boris Johnson is to order another delay to the introduction of post-Brexit border checks on goods entering Britain from the EU, in an admission that piling new costs on imports would exacerbate the cost of living crisis. Full checks on imports from the bloc were supposed to come into effect on July 1, but the

US government debt sold off on Thursday as investors priced in more aggressive policy tightening by the Federal Reserve this year after chair Jay Powell said that a jumbo interest rate increase would be considered at the central bank’s May meeting. Powell, in a panel discussion at the IMF on Thursday said that it was

The UK government is preparing legislation that will give ministers sweeping powers to tear up the post-Brexit deal governing trade in Northern Ireland, risking a fresh confrontation with Brussels. Two people with knowledge of internal discussions said prime minister Boris Johnson and foreign secretary Liz Truss had in principle signed off on plans to put

The governor of the Bank of England said he was concerned about the risks of persistent inflationary pressure from a strong labour market, even though he expects economic activity to slow over the rest of the year. Speaking on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington on Thursday, Andrew Bailey

The water industry regulator for England and Wales has appointed a new chief executive who has pledged to address the sector’s poor performance on sewage pollution at a time of mounting public anger. David Black, who has served as interim chief executive of Ofwat for the past 12 months, will take the post on a

The life of Ennio Morricone — composer of transcendent themes for Spaghetti Westerns, award-winners such as The Mission and countless more — might have been a movie by the age of 18. That would have taken us to 1946, a world of drama already unfolded for a boy from Rome who had wanted to become

America looms over Audrey Diwan’s Happening. The film is set in Angoulême, south-west France, but the year is 1963, and the students here are besotted with the transatlantic exports of chewing gum and rock’n’roll. Now, in 2022 this bold, clear-eyed drama, which won the top prize at last year’s Venice Film Festival, is about to

Playground, the vastly impressive debut feature of Belgian director Laura Wandel, was released there last year as Un monde, a world. Both end up meaning the same thing. The English title pinpoints where much of the film takes place; the French what it feels like for the brother and sister whose story it is. He

This week, as western governments pondered sending aircraft to Ukraine, the Kyiv government embarked on a novel financing step: it launched a website #buymeafighterjet to crowdsource donations for jets from the world’s mega-rich. Once that might have seemed a laughably bizarre thing to do. But today it no longer appears quite so odd. Never mind

Steve Toltz’s new novel (only his third in 14 years; he’s a slow producer) could be a merry riff on the phrase “the suburbs of hell”. The narrator Angus Mooney (“people call me Mooney”) informs us that he’s dead from the start, and no one could be more disgruntled to discover there’s life after death.

In 2017, Muslim social worker Zouhairr Ech Chetouani campaigned for Emmanuel Macron in Asnières-sur-Seine, plastering posters of the centrist politician all over the suburb of northern Paris he calls home. Five years after Macron’s victory against Marine Le Pen, the 47-year-old says he is tempted to cast a blank ballot in the rematch between the

Tycoons, bankers and bosses are vying for control of Generali, Italy’s largest insurer. This acrimonious and, at times, personal battle has divided the Italian financial establishment. The outcome will matter far beyond this tight circle. Generali is worth about €30bn, employs roughly 75,000 people and serves approximately 67mn customers. Construction tycoon Francesco Caltagirone leads rebels