Super-rich can avoid queues as club puts five-year debentures up for sale – applications close on Friday

Tennis fans who struggle each year to secure tickets in Wimbledon’s public ballot or wait hours in the famous queue may be surprised to discover that almost a fifth of the seats on Centre Court are being sold to the global super-rich for £116,000 – each.

A total of 2,520 of the “debentures” are on sale, offering a reserved seat for each of the 14 days of the tournament for five years from 2026-30. Applications to buy the exclusive seats – positioned on the same level as the royal box – close at midday on Friday.

Finance chiefs say higher taxes for the super-rich are key to battling global inequality and climate crisis

• Billionaires should pay minimum 2% wealth tax, say G20 ministers

When the governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund convened for the spring meetings last week, it was all about the really big questions. What can the international community do to accelerate decarbonisation and fight climate change? How can highly indebted countries retain fiscal space to invest in poverty eradication, social services and global public goods? What does the international community need to do to get back on track towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? How can multilateral development banks be strengthened to support these ambitions?

There is one issue that makes addressing these global challenges much harder: inequality. While the disparity between the richest and poorest countries has slightly narrowed, the gap remains alarmingly high. Moreover, in the past two decades, we have witnessed a significant increase in inequalities within most countries, with the income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 50% nearly doubling. Looking ahead, current global economic trends pose serious threats to progress towards higher equality.

Svenja Schulze is Germany’s minister for economic cooperation and development; Fernando Haddad is the minister of finance in Brazil; Enoch Godongwana is the minister of finance in South Africa; Carlos Cuerpo is the minister of economy, trade and business and María Jesús Montero the minister of finance in Spain

Schools say increasing numbers of children are turning up sick because of dire housing conditions – if they turn up at all

Some children living in dire housing conditions have been woken up by chesty coughs caused by damp, others by the smell of sewage leaking down their walls. Toby* was woken by rats on his chest.

“It was midnight and he came to me crying,” said his mother, who does not want to be named. He is one of more than 3,800 children living in temporary accommodation in Lewisham, the council with the 10th highest number of children living in such housing in the UK.

Health Foundation report also predicts people in poorest areas will be three times more likely to die by the age of 70

A record 3.7 million workers in England will have a major illness by 2040, according to research .

On current trends, 700,000 more working-age adults will be living with high healthcare needs or substantial risk of mortality by 2040 – up nearly 25% from 2019 levels, according to a report by the Health Foundation charity.

£25bn of public money would have been saved between 2019 and 2023 if north had same care entry rates as south, report says

One in every 52 children in Blackpool are in care compared with one in 140 across England, leading to calls for more to be done to urgently tackle the widening north-south divide , brought on by “decades of underinvestment”.

Nine in every thousand children are in care in the north, compared with six in the rest of England, according to a report by Health Equity North.

Many low-income nations are having to spend more on interest payments than vital sustainability goals. That needs to change

Blighted by the effects of global heating, beset by food insecurity and rising poverty, and hobbled by dollar-denominated debt that leaves no fiscal room for manoeuvre, some of the world’s poorest nations are enduring a perfect storm. In the wake of Covid and then the war in Ukraine, inflation and high interest rates have tipped many over the edge: between 2020 and 2023 there were 18 sovereign defaults in 10 developing countries – more than in the previous two decades. Others are either in debt distress or close to it.

As the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund hold their annual spring meetings in Washington this week, this dismal state of affairs should be at the top of delegates’ agendas. Prior to the pandemic, the 2020s had been earmarked as a transformative decade – one in which developing nations would make vital progress towards climate targets and eliminating extreme poverty and hunger. Instead, due to events beyond those countries’ control, there has been what a World Bank report this week described as a “great reversal”. In countries classified as eligible for grants and loans from the bank’s International Development Association (IDA), a quarter of the population is now surviving on less than $2.15 a day – the global definition of poverty.

The case for removing the two-child and overall benefit caps grows stronger all the time

When the biggest shake-up of the welfare system in decades was introduced, there were bound to be teething troubles. But the welter of problems after the launch of universal credit – especially the five-week wait for initial payments and the harshness of the sanctions regime – led to persistent questions over whether it should be abolished . Ministerial ambition appeared to have outstripped Whitehall’s capacity for delivery.

But the relatively smooth operation of the system during the pandemic, including the administration of the £20 weekly uplift, improved its reputation. Seven million people are expected to be on UC by the end of the next parliament, and plans for the remainder of the managed migration from the old system are in place. The aim of streamlining three separate bureaucracies into one has been met, and the greater simplicity of this arrangement has brought some advantages.

Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across the state – and unhoused people allege poor treatment

This story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations with support from the Wayne Barrett Project

On an October morning, a small army arrived to evict Rudy Ortega from his home in the Crash Zone, an encampment located near the end of the airport runway in San Jose, California, Silicon Valley’s largest city. As jets roared overhead, garbage trucks and police squad cars encircled Ortega’s hand-built shelter. Heavy machinery operators stood by for the signal to bulldoze Ortega’s camp.

By voting for the tobacco and vapes bill, MPs have a historic opportunity to prevent disease and reduce inequality

• Prof Chris Whitty is the chief medical officer for England

Addiction to smoking traps then slowly disables and kills thousands of our fellow citizens, especially the most vulnerable. The great majority of smokers wish they had never started, but their choice was taken away at a young age by marketing that deliberately promoted addiction to nicotine.

About 80,000 people a year die in the UK as a result and many more are harmed. The burden of smoking-related diseases is very heavily weighted towards people living in areas of deprivation, with about one-third of smokers in England living in the most deprived two deciles. Smoking is one of the most important modifiable drivers of the substantial inequalities in health we see across the country.

Prof Chris Whitty is the chief medical officer for England