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Good morning. I’m not sure what to make of the negative first-quarter GDP number, which was a disappointment, but included a huge shift in the trade balance, which may be noise. But we are seeing slower growth elsewhere, so in any case the report was not wildly anomalous. The employment cost index, out this morning,

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. The race for a successor at the helm of the eurozone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, is formally kicking off next week when the application process begins. A few names of potential candidates have already emerged and we’ll bring you up to speed with who could succeed

Louise Kennedy’s debut novel plunges us into Northern Ireland in 1975 — one of the bloodiest years of the Troubles, despite a ceasefire. Cushla Lavery is a 24-year-old Catholic primary school teacher living with her mother in a garrison town near Belfast. She sometimes helps her brother out at the family pub, where a “fifty-odd”

It will take about three minutes to read this column. Whether it’s worth three minutes depends on me, of course. I will do my best. But it also depends on you, on your attitude to time and, perhaps, on your profession. Twenty years ago, M Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and theology, began an

Standing in a field on a beautiful summer’s day, I received the call telling me my brother Charlie had died. It was a remarkably tranquil scene. Tall grass swayed on either side of me in the warmth of the afternoon sun. I was eight months pregnant with my second baby, and my partner and I

In a cemetery on the edge of the Namibian desert, volunteer Laidlaw Peringanda tends the low dirt mounds where victims of the 20th century’s first genocide are buried. Tens of thousands of people from the Ovaherero, Nama and San groups died in atrocities committed by German colonisers between 1904 and 1908, some in concentration camps

Alice Murray has three complaints about her neighbourhood in Scotland: lamp posts, dog poo and politicians. Standing outside her pebble-dashed house in Springburn, a northern suburb of Glasgow, the 85-year-old bemoaned the poor infrastructure, particularly the rusting street lights. Murray, who voted Labour all her life until 2017 when she backed the Scottish National party

In an article for British Vogue published in 1943, the American war photographer Lee Miller detailed – often with dry wit – her observations of the lives of nurses at a US Army base in Oxford: “They are not forbidden, but not encouraged, to marry. They may not serve in the same unit as their

Is there not a danger that we in the west may be fooling ourselves if we believe, like US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, that Russia will come out of its “special military operation” in Ukraine weakened? History may help with the answer (“US wants Russia ‘weakened’ and orders return of diplomats”, Report, April 26). It’s

The “non-dom” tax status is not a loophole — it is a specific provision within the tax code aimed at attracting wealthy foreigners to the UK (“Labour vows to overhaul ‘outdated’ tax perk for rich”, Report, April 26). Akshata Murty has used the rules as they were intended to be used. That the wife of

I read Martin Sandbu’s article (“Central bankers should ease off the brakes”, Opinion, April 20) with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. My amusement stems from Sandbu’s heroic assumption that “accelerated inflation in 2021 arose from Covid-related production disruptions”, in effect a negative supply shock. Missing from his analysis is any discussion of excessive monetary

I am starting to think that the FT’s editors are gongorists because I am constantly needing to discern the meaning of obscure words present in the US edition of your newspaper. “Autarky” appeared on April 22 (Letters); “resile” and “grifters” on April 27 (Letters and Opinion). If your editors believe that “gongorism” might appeal to

European shares and US stock futures rose sharply on Thursday, as Facebook parent Meta rallied in out-of-hours trading on the back of better than expected profits. The regional Stoxx Europe 600 index added 0.9 per cent, while futures contracts tracking Wall Street’s S&P 500 rose 1.4 per cent. Those tracking the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 index

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the country’s election apparatus, in a move analysts said would damage democracy by handing his party greater control of the electoral system. The proposed constitutional changes, which will be sent to Congress on Thursday, would dissolve the country’s national electoral institute (INE), which

The British government has become a shareholder in a cannabis-based products company called Grass & Co, as well as a south London brewery and a Nordic yoghurt bar maker as part of its most recent investments under the Future Fund Covid-19 support scheme. Chancellor Rishi Sunak launched the Future Fund in May 2020 to help

The Conservative party is coming under mounting pressure to expel a backbench MP accused of watching pornography in the House of Commons chamber. The MP, who has not been named, has been referred to parliament’s independent complaints and grievance scheme by Chris Heaton-Harris, Tory chief whip, after two female party members said on Tuesday that

Accounting and investor groups on Thursday hit out at the government’s move to ditch a bill from its next legislative programme that would have implemented long-delayed reform of audit and corporate governance. A draft bill to underpin the reform, including the creation of a new regulator of audit firms, has been dropped from the Queen’s

Eli Lilly said a late-stage trial of its new weight-loss drug showed it helped patients on high doses reduce their body weight by about a fifth, raising hopes among doctors and investors that it could become a blockbuster treatment to tackle the global obesity epidemic. The US drugmaker said its drug Tirzepatide showed an average

There’s a lot of debate over what makes a successful social media platform. Elon Musk promises to prioritise freedom of speech if he takes over Twitter but balancing that with moderation is a course that networks have tried to navigate since their inception. In the wake of the Tesla chief’s $44bn buyout of Twitter, the

Hedge fund Elliott Management has launched an activist campaign against Suncor Energy, one of Canada’s biggest oil producers, calling for an overhaul of company leadership in a bet on the future of the country’s controversial oil sands. Elliott, which said it was one of Suncor’s top shareholders with a 3.4 per cent stake, hit out

Elon Musk is either a jester or a genius, if commentary since the world’s richest man bid $44bn for Twitter is anything to go by. But Musk’s loud and divisive personality, perfectly suited to the platform, risks diverting attention from bigger questions about who should control social media. No matter whether his audacious debt-fuelled bid