Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1170 i The Week

What happened Labour and anti-Semitism Jeremy Corbyn stoked Labour’s anti-Semitism row this week by attending a Passover event with a far-left Jewish group that had dismissed the furore as a right-wing smear campaign. Labour MP John Woodcock said Corbyn’s decision to attend a ritual meal hosted by Jewdas was “deliberately baiting the mainstream Jewish community days after they pleaded with him to tackle anti-Semitism”. Corbyn denied that charge and insisted there was no place in his party for racism of any sort. Corbyn has been under growing pressure to deal with this issue since it came to light, a fortnight ago, that in 2012 he had questioned the decision by a local London authority to remove an anti-Semitic mural. This weekend he deleted his personal Facebook account after reports that…

Sacramento, California Police shooting: A forensic pathologist has concluded that Stephon Clark, the unarmed man killed by police in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento last month, was not facing officers when he was killed. Dr Bennet Omalu said that Clark was shot eight times, including six times in the back. His findings contradict parts of the police account of the killing, which has led to days of protests in Sacramento. The autopsy also found that Clark (above), 22, a father of two small boys, did not die instantly, but was alive for between three and ten minutes while police failed to provide medical aid. The officers say that they mistook an iPhone that Clark was holding for a gun. Los Angeles, California Cancer warnings on coffee: A judge in Los…

The urge to feel that someone’s in control Juliet Samuel The Daily Telegraph Did you know that there’s a secret plan to privatise the NHS; that Muslim immigrants are plotting to take over Britain; that the Brexit vote was stolen by a far-right Facebook cabal? The appetite for conspiracy theories never dies, says Juliet Samuel, because it’s far more comforting to believe some specific agency is responsible for the world’s nastiness than to put it down “to a chaotic mix of historical trends, incompetence, unintended consequences and special interests”. We need to feel someone or something is running the show, be it a pantheon of gods, one almighty God, or... the Jews. That’s why anti-Semitism, as Jean-Paul Sartre noted, isn’t so much an opinion as “a passion”: a passion to…

Pregnancy rates in England and Wales have fallen to an 11-year low in all age groups, except one: only women in their 40s are bucking the tend. According to the Office for National Statistics, the conception rate among over-40s rose from 15.1 per 1,000 women in 2015 to 15.4 in 2016, owing to more women deciding to delay motherhood. Since 1990, the number of pregnancies recorded among women over 40 has more than doubled, from 12,032 to 28,744. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, pregnancy rates among teenagers, in decline for some time, fell even further in 2016: there were 18.9 conceptions per 1,000 women aged 15-17, the lowest since such records began in 1969. There were 45,495 under-18 pregnancies in 1969, but only 18,076 in 2016. Among…

On 29 March 2019 – exactly a year from last Thursday – Britain will leave the European Union, said The Times. A transition deal has already been agreed, but much of the heavy lifting will have to be done in the coming months. Ahead of the European summit in October, the Government will need to have negotiated a broad agreement on the shape of the country’s future relationship with Europe and solved the riddle of the Irish border. Four huge pieces of Brexit legislation will have to be put before Parliament: the withdrawal bill, and separate bills on trade, customs and immigration. In the meantime, “lorries will have to keep rolling, aircraft will have to keep flying and Britain’s financial services industry will need to preserve access to the European…

“Ah yes, divorce: from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.” Robin Williams, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.” Benjamin Franklin, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle “TV sex is rarely realistic: I mean, who really knocks all the breakfast crockery off the kitchen table?” Carol Midgley in The Times “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.” Pablo Neruda, quoted in The Paris Review “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” William Shakespeare, quoted in The Washington Post “Somebody should…

Ireland are “going places”, said Robert Kitson in The Guardian. Last month, their rugby team sealed a Six Nations Grand Slam with a thumping win over England. And in the Champions Cup, Europe’s elite club competition, they are “mirroring” that success. On Sunday, Leinster defeated Saracens 30-19 to secure a place in the semi-finals, alongside the Irish club Munster; their win ensured that for the first time in six years, there are no English teams in the last four. Saracens had won the last two Champions Cups, said Owen Slot in The Times. Yet, on this occasion, they were mastered by a side playing “powerful, smart, accurate rugby”. Two of Leinster’s Irish “young gems” who impressed in the Six Nations, flanker Dan Leavy and lock James Ryan, were “again the…

To The Guardian Kris Manjapra’s excellent article on the slave trade reminds us of some uncomfortable contemporary truths. One is that many political and business “leaders” are where they are in part because their families benefited from the slave trade; millionaire and ex-PM David Cameron is only one such beneficiary. Another truth is that business has always been able to exert pressure to ensure its interests are put before those of slaves. Professor Gary Craig, York To The Guardian It would be no exaggeration to say that the entire Atlantic economy of former times, from which Britain profited more than most, was based on slave labour. Far from representing the new birth of freedom, what the discovery of the Americas brought about was a new birth of slavery. In the…

Courtney Marie Andrews: May Your Kindness Remain Loose Music £10 This 27-year-old Arizona native released a handful of albums that “went mostly unheard” before breaking through with Honest Life in 2016, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. That excellent record “pitched her as a modern Linda Ronstadt, evoking vulnerability, romance and some well-timed cracks in her warbling vibrato”. On this new album, mixing “rollicking country-rock” and “country-soul”, Andrews more than confirms her promise. It’s a “brilliant record, proof that old forms can still be timeless”, agreed Michael Hann in The Guardian. Andrews has an “unusual intensity”, as if forever on “the brink of eruption”. There’s a wonderful moment a few minutes into the title track, when a stately ballad “suddenly explodes” into a simple but “massively reverbed” guitar solo. This…

Best books… David Mamet David Mamet, the US playwright and screenwriter, lists the novels he loves for their dialogue. His own novel Chicago – a tale of mobsters and newspapermen set in the 1920s – has just been published by Custom House at £20. Outlaws by George V. Higgins, 1987 (Orion £9.99). Great dialogue – in novels, in drama or on the street corner – adheres to our consciousness and shapes our understanding of the world. If you appreciate great dialogue, read some of George Higgins’ novels. He was a 1970s state and federal prosecutor before he became a Homeric chronicler-inventor of the language of the cops, crooks and shysters of Boston. True Grit by Charles Portis, 1968 (Bloomsbury £9.99). The dialogue in True Grit is exquisite. Portis was inspired,…

Cioppino fish stew Serves 4-6 100ml white wine 2 x 500g cartons of passata classica 4 tbsps olive oil 3 or 4 star anise 4 garlic cloves, chopped 1 cooked crab 5 scallops, cleaned 5 raw large prawns, shell on 250g clams, cleaned 250g mussels, cleaned 500g halibut, cut into 4 even-sized pieces 500g salmon cut into 3 even-sized pieces 1 tsp caster sugar sea salt and freshly ground black pepper small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped 1 sourdough loaf, sliced • Pour the wine into a large saucepan and place over a medium heat. Bring the wine to the boil and as soon as it’s bubbling, pour in the passata and half the olive oil. Add the star anise and garlic to the pan too, and stir everything together.…

Markets globally tumbled again as the US and China continued their tit for tat over tariffs. After China imposed retaliatory 15% tariffs on 120 US goods including pork and wine, President Trump struck back with a list of about 1,300 Chinese products he plans to hit with a 25% tariff. The Dow Jones dropped 2% in early trading on Wednesday as the spectre of a trade war intensified. The price of soya beans, which account for almost 60% of US agricultural exports to China, fell by 4%. There is still hope that neither side will actually follow through on the measures. Bad Easter weather added to the gloom on the British high street. Footfall was down by 9.6% on Good Friday compared with last year, and continued to fall for…

A spur to close the gender pay gap Editorial Financial Times It is nearly 50 years since men and women gained the legal right to equal pay for equal work, says the Financial Times. “But there remains a stubborn gap.” Thanks to new reporting requirements, “we now know more about the nature of the problem”. The figures “give an incomplete picture”, but what is clear is that “a large majority of employers pay men more on average than they do women; and the main reason for this is that men occupy a higher proportion of senior positions”. That finding is hardly surprising, but the process itself has been valuable, prompting employers “to think harder” about the reasons for this imbalance. Encouragingly, “some of those with the biggest gaps – such…

The week’s best buys AG Barr The Times The Irn-Bru maker’s revenues are up 8%, and it has reformulated recipes ahead of the sugar tax. There are promising soft drink distribution deals for Australia’s Bundaberg and Italy’s San Benedetto. Buy. 626p. Diploma The Times This products and services supplier, which sells seals and controls to hospitals, aerospace and defence industries, is well-run and cash generative. Growth prospects are strong and a ramp-up of acquisitions seems likely. Buy. £11.68. Fulcrum Utility Services The Sunday Times Fulcrum designs and installs efficient gas pipes and power cables – and has tie-ups with several housebuilders. A new licence from Ofgem could be transformative in the electric car infrastructure market. Buy. 61p. Homeserve Investors Chronicle The emergency insurance and repair services firm is expanding, with…

Controversy of the week The £8 billion raiders It’s one of Britain’s oldest engineering firms. It made the cannonballs fired at Waterloo; it produced Spitfires in the Second World War; today it makes car and aircraft parts, and employs 59,000 people across the world. Yet few of us had heard of GKN, said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph, until it became the target, a few months ago, of an £8bn hostile takeover bid by a private company, Melrose, whose four directors stand to make £285m from the deal. Cue outrage: overnight, GKN was recast as an “underappreciated ‘jewel in the crown’” of British industry being devoured by a firm reviled as “asset strippers” by everyone from Jeremy Corbyn to the Daily Mail. Last week, just as the deal was…

“I am becoming invisible” She was the darling of the Primrose Hill set in the 1990s, when she was married to Jude Law and partied with Kate Moss – but Sadie Frost has found that fame tends to favour the young. At 52, she says, “you do start to feel invisible and irrelevant as well, because there is a new generation of people that are becoming more visible and relevant”. And though she would be quite happy to “become like an old hippy and disappear – living in a house with no mirrors”, social media makes the process of being forgotten quite painful. “I try not to judge or compare myself, and do all the good things like yoga and meditation, but by nine o’clock in the morning I feel…

A German man walked into his local police station last week to ask for help in breaking up with his girlfriend. When the 34-year-old explained that he wanted to end the relationship but didn’t know how to do it, a female officer took him aside and suggested several options. The police force, in the city of Ludwigshafen, refused to disclose what had been discussed – but insisted the man would have to talk to his girlfriend himself. “We are willing to advise,” it said in a statement, “but we cannot close the deal.” Snoop Dogg has surprised both his fans and his critics by releasing a gospel album. Bible of Love came out three weeks ago and is top of the Billboard gospel chart. “I did my share of bringing…

“Spray-on umbrella” for coral An ultra-thin, biodegradable “sun shield” that rests on the ocean’s surface could be used to preserve Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, scientists believe. One of the biggest threats to coral reefs is bleaching, which occurs when corals, under stress from rising sea temperatures, expel the algae that live in their tissues. This has been a particular problem on the Great Barrier Reef, where two bleaching “events”, in 2016 and 2017, led to as many as half of the reef’s corals dying. Now, a team at the Australian Institute of Marine Science has proposed a solution: a white “liquid umbrella” that reflects and scatters the light, and so keeps the water cooler. In the laboratory, they tested a floating film that was made from calcium carbonate – the…

Sean Penn’s literary career has not got off to a good start. The film star has just published his debut novel and it is getting a drubbing. Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is apparently an unsubtle satire on contemporary America. Reviewers have described it as “repellent”, “stupid” and “crazy”. One sentence, selected as an example by The New York Times, reads: “There is pride to be had where the prejudicial is practised with precision in the trenchant triage of tactile terminations.” Kim Kardashian will always look flawless – even if she is “out of it” in her dotage. The reality TV star (pictured) has made a living will, which specifies that beauticians must attend to her, even when she is dying. “I made a section that... [if] I can’t…

You’re not meant to speak ill of the dead, said Andrew Malone in the Daily Mail, but I’m going to make an exception for Winnie Mandela, who died this week at the age of 81. The woman was a monster. At her state funeral, scheduled to take place in South Africa next weekend, the self-styled “mother of the nation” will be hailed for her part in the fight against apartheid. Yet the reality is that she was a “toxic” individual who spent decades preaching hatred and seeking to cash in on the name of her estranged husband, Nelson Mandela. Her most infamous period was in the 1980s, when she formed Mandela United Football Club. Supposedly an amateur football team, it comprised a bunch of thugs who, from her home in…

Anthony Joshua’s “ascent to the summit” of heavyweight boxing continues, said Gareth A. Davies in The Sunday Telegraph. Last Saturday, the 28-year-old from Watford defeated Joseph Parker on points to claim the World Boxing Organisation heavyweight title. Little separated the two boxers at the halfway mark, but in the later rounds it was Joshua’s jab – as well as his superior fitness and stamina – that “proved the difference”. Just 21 fights into his career, Joshua now holds three of the four major heavyweight titles, leaving him one short of unifying them. Truth be told, this wasn’t a “classic” bout, said Sean Ingle in The Observer. It lacked intensity and drama. But that’s because every time it “threatened to ignite”, it was broken up by Giuseppe Quartarone, the incompetent referee,…

Cricket England lost their series against New Zealand 1-0, following a draw in the second Test. Football West Brom manager Alan Pardew left the club, following an eighth successive defeat in the Premier League. Tottenham beat Chelsea 3-1. Manchester City beat Everton 3-1. Tennis At the age of 32, American player John Isner won the Miami Open to claim his first Masters 1000 title. In the women’s competition, American Sloane Stephens beat Jelena Ostapenko from Latvia in straight sets.…

Isle of Dogs Dir: Wes Anderson 1hr 41mins (PG) Wes Anderson’s soulful labour of love ★★★ Wes Anderson’s “entrancing” new stop-motion animation is a “joyous and visually splendid” tribute to man’s best friend, said Nick de Semlyen in Empire. It is largely set on Trash Island, a desolate Japanese prison colony, where hordes of dogs have been exiled by the villainous Mayor Kobayashi. The dogs are voiced by a slew of well-known stars, including Bryan Cranston (as the aggressive Chief), Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. When the mayor’s feisty nephew crash-lands on the island in search of his missing pet, Spots, he becomes the focus for a canine mission that develops into a rebellion. For once, Anderson has “exited his comfort zone”, said Tim Robey in…

Chile’s wines are surging in popularity with us Brits – and no wonder, says Jane MacQuitty in The Times. They’ve improved so much, even cheap and cheerful fruit-first bottles are fresh and elegant: try the “leafy, gamey, spiced plum” of a 2016 Cono Sur Reserva Pinot Noir (£7; Morrisons). The consistently good, budget Chilean white to buy is the light, lemongrass-scented 2017 Casillero del Diablo Sauvignon Blanc (£5.99; Co-op). Trade up just a bit and you’ll be richly rewarded with the “bold, blackcurrant and plum jam-lush” 2014 Montes Single Vineyard Merlot (£11.99; Majestic Wine), or the “bold, lime juice and petrol pizzazz” that is Matetic’s 2016 Corralillo San Antonio Riesling (£8.95; Wine Society). If you can, go even further and try the “awesome” 2014 Acrux (£19.95, currently out of stock;…

The magician known as the Conjuror on the River Kwai Fergus Anckorn 1918-2018 At the age of 18, Fergus Anckorn became the youngest member of the Magic Circle; years later, he’d be known as the Conjuror on the River Kwai. As a Japanese POW for three years from 1942, he survived starvation, enslavement and the notorious Alexandra Hospital massacre. Sometimes it was luck that saved his life, but quick wits – and magic – also played their part. Born in Kent in 1918, Anckorn, who has died aged 99, grew up in a happy, loving household. He was given his first magic set when he was four and, calling himself Wizardus, was elected to the Magic Circle in 1936. When war broke out he joined the Royal Artillery, and in…

“Capitol Hill wants Facebook’s blood, but President Trump isn’t interested,” says Jonathan Swan on Axios. “The tech behemoth Trump wants to go after is Amazon.” Sources say he’s obsessed with it. That news wiped 5% off Jeff Bezos’s online retail giant last week, said Cristiano Lima on Politico. And on Monday Amazon took another hit, dropping 6.21% after Trump took to Twitter accusing it of exploiting the US Postal Service, dodging taxes and putting thousands of retailers out of business. Some have suggested that Trump is waging “a proxy war” against the Bezos-owned Washington Post, which has been critical in its coverage. If so, he has drawn blood. The sell-off cost Amazon more than $35bn in stock value, “suggesting Trump’s war with the media has the potential to hit media…

Sir Martin Sorrell Sir Martin Sorrell’s position at the top of WPP, the advertising group that “he turned into a powerhouse over more than three decades”, is under threat following allegations of “personal misconduct”, said the FT. The group has hired an outside law firm to investigate allegations of “financial impropriety” relating to the use of company funds. Sir Martin, who earned £70m in 2015, in “the largest ever payout made to a FTSE 100 boss”, has said that he “unreservedly” rejects the allegations. But insiders describe WPP as “a company in shock”. Sorrell is “one of the more recognisable and outspoken figures in the advertising business,” said Mike Shields and Tanya Dua on Business Insider. But WPP – the owner of such big-name agencies as J. Walter Thompson and…

Paris Hate crime outrage: Thousands of people marched through Paris and other French cities last week in memory of Mireille Knoll (pictured), an 85-year-old Jewish woman and Holocaust survivor who was stabbed to death in her home in what police believe was an anti-Semitic attack. The murder has outraged France and raised questions about the country’s failure to tackle an upsurge in anti-Jewish hate crimes. Police have arrested two suspects, one of whom was reported to be her Muslim neighbour. The killing took place in the 11th arrondissement, just a few streets away from the site of the murder last year of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Jewish woman who was thrown out of her own window. Paris Months of rail strikes begin: Three months of rolling strikes on France’s railways…

Back in 2003, the discovery of a tiny mummified skeleton in a deserted mining town in Chile’s Atacama Desert made headlines worldwide. The skeleton (pictured), which was named Ata, was only six inches long, yet its bones were as mature as those of a six-year-old. Moreover, it had a conical head and only ten (instead of 12) pairs of ribs, leading to wild speculation that it could be extraterrestrial in origin. Five years ago, scientists at Stanford University in California put paid to that notion. Their analysis of the skeleton’s bone marrow confirmed that the remains were of a human infant, a girl who had probably been stillborn only decades ago. Now, further studies have revealed that Ata suffered from seven key mutations in genes responsible for skeletal development, which…

Nothing attracts attention like celebrity, so when two rugby internationals were accused of raping and assaulting a 19-year-old student, after a night out in Belfast in June 2016, it was likely to make the front pages, said Susan McKay in The Irish Times. And so it proved: for weeks the “rugby rape trial” was all anyone seemed to be talking about in Belfast. And as the accused – Paddy Jackson, 26, and Stuart Olding, 25 – had played for Ireland as well as Ulster, this was true in Dublin too. Last week, following a 42-day trial that had contained many sordid moments, including a discussion of what precisely constitutes “spit-roasting”, the pair were finally acquitted on all charges. But the legal saga carries on: Jackson’s lawyers have launched proceedings against…

On Maundy Thursday, the Vatican began, quite literally, to fall apart, said Joe Roberts in Metro. Easter worshippers had to duck for cover as bits of plaster rained down on the floor of St Peter’s Basilica. No one was hurt, but some may have taken it as a sign, coming as it did hours after Pope Francis was reported – on the front page of an Italian newspaper – to have denied a central tenet of Catholic doctrine: the existence of hell. In a conversation with his friend Eugenio Scalfari – the 93-year-old co-founder of La Repubblica – Francis supposedly said that rather than being condemned to spending eternity in an “unquenchable fire”, separated from God, the souls of the unrepentant simply “disappear”. Did the Pope really say that hell…

“No one died, no one doped, no one fixed,” said Andy Bull in The Guardian. The only thing the Australian cricket team tried to do was cheat, and they didn’t even manage that – Cameron Bancroft’s attempt to scuff the ball, in the third Test against South Africa, was so ineffective that the umpires didn’t “feel the need” to change it. Yet you wouldn’t know that from the extraordinary fallout of this scandal. Australia’s coach, Darren Lehmann, has quit. The trio blamed for the ball-tampering have all been banned – ex-captain Steve Smith and ex-vice-captain David Warner for a year, Bancroft for nine months. Most shocking of all has been the sight of these macho Australians breaking down in tears at press conferences: Smith appeared “almost overcome with suffering”. He…

Gambling with children To The Times As Alice Thomson points out, children are being groomed to gamble online, but they are also being bombarded by gambling advertising on TV. The UK gambling industry spent £312m on advertising in 2016 – a 63% increase since 2012. Gambling advertising on TV in the UK has increased by 43% since 2012, and a great deal is shown in the commercial breaks of live sporting events. Some 95% of TV advert breaks during live UK football matches feature at least one gambling advert. Perhaps we should follow Australia and ban gambling advertising during televised live sport as well as for a period before and after the event is shown. The inevitable consequences of allowing this normalisation of gambling to go unchecked will be an…

United Chip 5 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 (020-7490 0069) Everyone’s an expert when it comes to fish and chips, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. Open up something niche, like a ceviche joint or an izakaya, and a few people will have an opinion. Open a new chippy and everyone will pile in. But happily for United Chip, it was clear, on the roaring lunchtime that I visited, that Clerkenwell has made up its mind: this place is a belter, “attending to practically every modern bell and whistle it can find, while still caring about the essentials”. In the “modern” category are: line-caught fish only; fully recyclable packaging; a fantastic spiced prawn burger; and a needlessly brilliant homemade curry sauce. In the “essentials” camp: cod, pollock or haddock “steamed…

New cars: what the critics say Auto Express With its Airbump side panels, the original Cactus made a splash on its launch in 2014. The new version of the hatchback is slightly less quirky, but just as “customisable”, with 31 colour combinations. It emphasises comfort – using Citroën’s new Progressive Hydraulic Cushions technology to deal with potholes – and quietness, thanks to additional sound insulation and thicker windows. The Daily Telegraph The Cactus’s new suspension produces an excellent low-speed ride and the restyling gives it a more “upmarket” appearance. It has light steering but decent grip levels, with a “perky” engine pulling strongly and smoothly. It’s a likeable “oddity”, if small for its class: the boot is just 358 litres and the optional panoramic glass roof leaves limited headroom for…

NEX: Chicago alley cat News that City tycoon Michael Spencer has sold his NEX financial technology business to Chicago-based CME Group for £3.9bn could be seen as “another example of an American giant bagging an interesting piece of City infrastructure”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. By some measures, NEX is “the UK’s biggest fintech”. But at least CME plans to keep NEX’s European HQ in Britain. If Spencer, who personally pockets £670m, “made that a condition of the deal, well played”. It’s a boost for the post-Brexit City. “CME is the world’s largest exchange: if it had serious worries about London’s status as the European home for trading in fixed-income securities, it would not be doing this deal.” There had been talk of rivals, such as the Intercontinental Exchange,…