Filled with ethereal fairies and magical animals, evil stepmothers and beastly creatures – not to mention the odd wicked woman living in a gingerbread house – fantastical and frightening fairytales continue to enchant. Children like stories about cannibalism, as Margaret Atwood once noted. Constantly retold and reimagined, they’ve morphed from centuries-old spoken folk tales to … Read more
As the number of lawsuits alleging that Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder caused cancer neared 40,000 last fall, the drugmaker reached for a legal strategy known as the Texas two-step. It created a new company, called LTL Management, to hold these liabilities and filed for bankruptcy to shield itself from the claims. Like other companies … Read more
In Iceland, chef Solveig Eiríksdóttir – known as Solla – has long been the face of healthy eating. Until recently, she ran five restaurants, including the renowned vegetarian, raw- and vegan-friendly Gló in Reykjavik. She oversaw an organic market and food brand and regularly appeared on TV. A speaker at the Longevity Now Conference in … Read more
At the heart of Tokyo’s Aoyama cemetery is a monument dedicated by the city’s former governor, Shintaro Ishihara, to the foreign diplomats, experts and advisers who helped to propel Japan into the modern age. It is a touching memorial that would feel considerably more sincere if, just before its appearance, Ishihara had not threatened to … Read more
North Korea last month fired a ballistic missile capable of hitting the US territory of Guam, the latest in a record flurry of tests that demonstrated the unrelenting progress of the country’s illicit nuclear weapons program. But of all the missile systems tested in recent weeks, it is the development of a new generation of … Read more
Twenty years before the Covid pandemic made it fashionable for city workers to rethink their lifestyle, Tristram and Rebecca Mayhew quit their London-based jobs as marketing and fundraising managers and relocated to the country. Their move followed a chance sighting of a treetop attraction in France, which inspired them to launch Go Ape. The Mayhews’ … Read more
A handful of companies are seeking to become the first China-headquartered businesses to go public in the US since July, in a test of regulators’ willingness to accept new listings after clampdowns on both sides of the Pacific. Six China and Hong Kong-based groups filed new or updated documents with the US Securities and Exchange … Read more
Every morning, Benoit Gannaz places a small black device in his breast pocket to make sure his work is not killing him. Like every worker at the Chooz A nuclear power facility in northern France, he carries a detector that measures ionising radiation levels at all times. The reactor was turned off more than three … Read more
Private equity giants including Apollo and Blackstone are investing in Hollywood production companies as they look to profit from the $ 115bn a year that US streaming services are pouring into television shows and movies. These investors are betting that ferocious demand for new television shows will endure for many more years, according to interviews … Read more
Footage of overwhelmed doctors treating patients in makeshift conditions in Italy’s Lombardy region in March 2020 was the first sign of the deadly threat posed by coronavirus in Europe. The sight of clinicians struggling to find beds in Spain’s capital, Madrid, also foreshadowed the public health emergency ahead. Two years on, the situation has been … Read more