Day: February 21, 2026

Now 150 years old, can Bangkok’s Mandarin Oriental still compete?

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Every urban hotel aspires to being a cynosure of the city it’s in. Those that have succeeded can probably be counted on two hands. Having at least a century of operational history helps, as does an unassailable location. Above all such a hotel needs to be a repository of stories, both its own and the ones people create for themselves in it. Which brings us to the Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok,…

The splinternet: how online shutdowns are getting cheaper and easier to impose

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During the height of Iran’s blackout in January, people could still access a platform that, in some senses, was like the internet. Iranians could message family members on a government-monitored app and watch clips of Manchester United on a Farsi-language video-sharing site. They could read state news and use a local navigation service. What they couldn’t do was check international headlines about thousands of people being killed by government forces during one of the bloodiest weeks in recent Iranian history. Nor, for the most part, could they get evidence out…