business 
At 11 a.m. on Friday, the S&P 500 was down about 4 percent, on top of a nearly 5 percent drop the day before. On Fox News, Harris Faulkner opened her 11 a.m. newscast with the following pronouncement: “President Trump is keeping another campaign promise. He tilted the global economy, and he’s done that to … Read more
The Trump administration has failed to disburse congressionally approved funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the news network originally set up to counter Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, despite a judge’s order to keep it operating, according to court filings and officials at the news organization. The news group, known as RFE/RL, has not … Read more
People are usually at their most interesting when they are in flux – uncertain of the way forward, of what life they ought to build. That was the case with John Lennon and Yoko Ono when they arrived in New York in 1971. They were both fleeing England – the recriminations around the Beatles breakup; … Read more
‘Unexpected kindness I have never forgotten’ I worked as a dialogue coach on Oliver Stone’s Alexander in 2003. Val was playing Alexander’s father, Philip II of Macedon. Oliver wanted the Macedonians to have Celtic accents in contrast to the Greeks, who looked down on the Macedonians, as the English have only too frequently done to … Read more
It is not often that the arts section of a newspaper finds itself concerned with the aesthetic merits of a sewage works. But then there are few facilities designed with the finesse of the new €139m (£117m) wastewater treatment plant in Arklow, which stands like a pair of minty green pagodas on the edge of … Read more
Pixar’s film-makers are famously asked to pitch three unique ideas when proposing new projects. In terms of Elio, unique is very much the operative word. Presumably that pitch went somewhere along the lines of: “A lonely kid is mistaken for Earth’s ambassador by a UN-style council of sentient celestial bath bombs dipped in day-glow glitter … Read more
Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale looks like a pop star from a different era. She walks into a bar in east London wearing a giant, floor-length pale-pink padded coat. She has bleached eyebrows, dip-dyed hair, drawn-on freckles and jewels stuck to her nails and teeth. For a moment, Top of the Pops could be on primetime … Read more
How do you follow a game as complete and extensive as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Nintendo is banking on the answer being: go bigger. Double the number of racers to 24. Increase the number of characters (60 in total). More weapons. And, most eye-catchingly, more exploration. That’s not a term you’d associate with the closed … Read more
My earliest reading memoryI started with a comic: Valiant. Hardly great literature – but it provided escapism from my prep school. The tales of Kelly’s Eye and the Steel Claw enthralled me and I still dream of them now. My favourite book growing upI was always a fan of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise. She was a sort … Read more
Austin 9.30pm, BBC OneWhat starts as a zippy Aussie comedy about a man on the brink of being cancelled soon turns into something quite heartwarming. Ben Miller is British children’s author Julian, who is about to lose his career and wife Ingrid (Sally Phillips) while on tour in Australia, when neurodivergent Austin (Michael Theo) introduces … Read more