Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1285 i The Week

What happened Independence Day? Pubs, restaurants, art galleries, cinemas, hotels and hairdressers can reopen in England from 4 July, in the latest relaxation of the lockdown rules announced by the Prime Minister this week. Boris Johnson said people should still remain two metres apart where possible, but that under a new “one-metre plus policy”, this distance could be halved where mitigation measures are in place – such as face masks or screens. All indoor hospitality will be limited to table service. Two households will be able to meet in any setting, indoors or out, provided that they maintain social distancing – so family members who live apart will not be able to hug. People will also be able to stay with friends in second homes and holiday lets. The Prime…

Game of Thrones fans, after George R.R. Martin revealed that he is making progress on the long-awaited sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, set in the kingdom of Westeros, and hopes to finish it next year. The novelist, 71, said he had been getting on well with his book in isolation in a mountain cabin. E-scooters, which could soon become ubiquitous in England. Although they are currently illegal on British roads, ministers are drawing up plans to allow e-scooter rental schemes, to help people get to work without using either public transport or cars. Theresa May, with news that despite her ignominious exit from Downing Street, she is in demand on the global lecture circuit. On leaving office, May said she wanted to do “a…

More than 3.3 million EU and European Economic Area citizens have applied for and been granted the right to remain in the UK after Brexit, the Home Office has said. Between three million and 3.8 million EU citizens live in the UK, and all have the automatic right to remain if they apply before July 2021. Of the applications, 57% were granted “settled status” (if they had been in the UK for five years or more) and 41% were given pre-settled status. The rest were withdrawn, refused or declared invalid. So far, 13 of the EU’s 27 member states, including France, are believed to have similar plans for Britons.…

Paris Corrupt uncle: The uncle of President Assad of Syria has been convicted of money laundering and embezzlement by a court in Paris, and sentenced to four years in jail. Rifaat al-Assad, 82, was found guilty of stealing millions from Syrian state coffers, money he used to build up a property portfolio in Europe. In total, the court confiscated assets worth around s90m, including a 3,000m2 mansion near the Arc de Triomphe. In Syria, he was known as the Butcher of Hama, for his role in putting down an uprising there in 1982. In 1984 he fled to Europe after launching a failed coup against the then president, his brother Hafez. He remains free pending an appeal. Paris Back to school: Millions of French children returned to school this week,…

1 Get Down and Get With It by Bobby Marchan, performed by Slade 2 Pencil Full of Lead, written and performed by Paolo Nutini 3 You May Be Right, written and performed by Billy Joel 4 You’re Still the One by Robert John “Mutt” Lange and Shania Twain, performed by Angus Johnston and Deirdre Johnston 5 Romeo and Juliet by Mark Knopfler, performed by Dire Straits 6 I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock ’n’ Roll) by Nick Lowe, performed by Dave Edmunds 7 Not Ready to Make Nice by Dixie Chicks and Dan Wilson, performed by Dixie Chicks 8* Don’t Stop by Christine McVie, performed by Fleetwood Mac Book: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas Luxury: pair of binoculars * Choice if allowed only one…

In the World Values Survey, ansvar – responsibility or accountability – consistently ranks highly among Swedes; this year it was in third place, beaten only by “family” and “happiness”. In no other country (including the other Nordic states) does responsibility even feature in the top ten values. This may explain why the government decision to leave it to individuals not to spread the disease is widely accepted. Swedes also have a distaste for economic risk: Sweden is the only country to have included “economic stability” on its list of important personal values. Sweden is also generally thought to have a culture of consensus. There is a Swedish word, åsiktskorridoren, “opinion corridor”, that refers to the narrow range of views that respectable people hold. There is, though, the curious case of…

John Bolton has done the state some service Thomas Wright The Atlantic I’m not a fan of John Bolton, says Thomas Wright, but he deserves credit for dishing the dirt on Donald Trump. The former national security adviser’s new book contains “explosive revelations” about the president, describing how he asked Chinese president Xi Jinping to help him win reelection by buying US farm produce; told Xi he supported the building of concentration camps for Uighurs in Xinjiang; and once asked whether Finland was part of Russia. Critics say this all comes too late. Bolton should have told this stuff to the impeachment hearings in January, they cry, rather than saving it up for a book. No doubt he should have, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. The Republicans would…

Since E.T. has yet to show up on our planet, estimating the number of alien civilisations in our galaxy might seem a premature – and rather futile – exercise. But that hasn’t stopped the authors of a new study from claiming that across the entire Milky Way, there are probably just over 30, each with the intelligence and technology to make contact with other planets. The researchers, from the University of Nottingham, arrived at this conclusion by adapting a sequential method developed by the astronomer Frank Drake in 1961. First, they estimated what proportion of stars in the Milky Way are more than five billion years old (the assumed minimum period in which intelligent life can develop). Next, they calculated how many of those stars would be dense and stable…

“There is a dwindling number of areas in which the UK has real influence, and does genuine good. International aid is one,” said the FT. The Department for International Development (DfID), spun out of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1997, is among the world’s most effective aid agencies, and has “turned the UK into a global force in development”. Its independence has protected overseas aid from becoming politicised: it was set up in the wake of the Pergau Dam scandal in the early 1990s, when development money for Malaysia was revealed to have been tied to weapons sales. But last week, Boris Johnson announced plans to merge DfID back into the Foreign Office, to better align the £15bn overseas aid budget with UK foreign policy. The move was condemned…

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” Napoleon Bonaparte, quoted on TheBulwark.com “We are all in the same storm. But we are not all in the same boats.” Canadian health official Dr Bonnie Henry, quoted in The New York Times “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Simone Weil, quoted in the New Statesman “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Cornel West, quoted in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal “All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.” Francis Bacon, quoted in Forbes “The new definition of working class is not being able to work from home.” Maurice Glasman, quoted in the New Statesman “The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in…

Senna This chronicle of the career of the Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna was the first of Asif Kapadia’s three fine documentary portraits of young geniuses struggling with the burden of fame (the others are Amy, about Amy Winehouse, and Diego Maradona). The film is gripping, and moving, too, in its account of Senna’s death after a crash at Imola in 1994. Man On Wire French street performer Philippe Petit pulled off one of the boldest stunts in history when he spent 45 minutes tightrope-walking, illegally, between the towers of the World Trade Centre in 1974. Mixing archival footage with interviews and filmed reconstructions, director James Marsh’s 2008 film is an exhilarating account of the feat and its preparation. Jiro Dreams of Sushi Sushi chef Jiro Ono runs a simple,…

Were it not for lockdown, visitors to Tate Modern would currently be confronted by the sight of a 30ft-tall sculpture of a spider facing them in its vast Turbine Hall, said Belle Hutton in AnOther magazine. The sculpture in question is Maman, one of the most acclaimed works by the “seminal” French-born artist Louise Bourgeois. The vast bronze and steel arachnid was the very first installation to grace the Turbine Hall when Tate Modern opened in 2000, and it proved astonishingly popular. Its homecoming was supposed to mark both the museum’s 20th birthday and the tenth anniversary of Bourgeois’s death. Created when the artist was well into her 80s, Maman is the largest of a series of spider sculptures Bourgeois designed late in a career that began in the 1930s,…

Tips of the week... how to start knitting ● To grasp the basics, look at Hobbycraft’s photo- and video-illustrated tutorial online, which explains casting your yarn onto a needle (hobbycraft.co.uk). ● You will also need to know how to match your yarn weight to your needle size, and bear in mind the bigger the needle, the bigger the stitch. ● The word “ply” next to a wool’s name tells you its thickness; “DK” (double knitting) often means it’s lighter weight. ● If you’re just starting out, chunky yarns are better, as they make individual stitches easier to identify, and they'll mean you can make something like a scarf quicker. ● Plastic or bamboo non-slip needles are best for beginners, as they are inexpensive, lightweight and will fit most types of…

Lloyd’s/Greene King: horrible histories As a young reporter, I was once given a tour of Lloyd’s of London, said James Moore in The Independent. “The place was steeped in history, as you might expect given its 17th century origins as a coffee house” – curios on display included the famous Lutine Bell and The Beatles’ life insurance policies. “What I was not shown, of course, was anything to do with the market’s role insuring the ships which hauled African slaves across the Atlantic via the brutal ‘Middle Passage’.” Lloyd’s has now stepped forward to address its “uncomfortable” history, promising to fund charities and organisations created to promote opportunities for black and ethnic minority groups. The pub chain Greene King – whose co-founder, Benjamin Greene, had at least 231 slaves…

Payback time for furlough beneficiaries Editorial The Observer It has become a truism that the Chancellor’s job-retention scheme is the “single most successful part of the Government’s pandemic support package for business”, says The Observer – albeit at huge cost (£22.9bn) and with the proviso that some of the 9.2 million jobs saved will “inevitably” be lost as the scheme winds down. Happily, a few companies – including Ikea and builder Taylor Wimpey – have declared that Covid-19 was “less disastrous than they feared for their business” and are paying back their furlough grants. A few others, such as builders Berkeley and Bellway, “never took the cash in the first place” – on the commendable grounds that it would be “disingenuous” to accept it when the sector had already benefited…

Controversy of the week Trouble at No. 10 “Well, that’s one puzzle solved,” said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Two months ago, the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced plans for a Covid-19 tracking app, allowing smartphones to communicate and alert those who had been in contact with infected people. He said it would be launched in mid-May and be “absolutely essential” to fighting the virus. Yet as the weeks went by, “the Government’s message kept mysteriously changing”. May came and went, and then we were told it was merely “the cherry on the cake” of a “world-beating” tracing system, and would appear some time later. Finally, all was revealed last week: the app didn’t work and had been scrapped. Germany, Italy and Denmark have all successfully built tracing apps…

Thrift, after Boris Johnson ordered that his official plane be painted in the colours of the Union Jack, at a cost to the taxpayer of £900,000. The RAF Voyager jet, which is also used by members of the Royal family, was previously grey. Downing Street said the “national branding” would help promote Britain abroad; Tory MPs described the expenditure as a “PR disaster”. Facebook, as Ben and Jerry’s joined a growing list of firms that are pulling their advertising from the social media giant, in response to its alleged failure to combat racist and hateful content. The North Face is among the other big brands to have signed up to the Stop Hate for Profit boycott, scheduled for July.…

44% of workers are afraid that they are about to lose their job because of Covid-19. Among furloughed workers, the proportion worried about their prospects rises to 54%. Adzuna/The Times Of those aged 16 to 29 who say their well-being has been affected by Covid-19, 76% said that they were bored. Overall, this age group was less likely to be worried about coronavirus generally (17%) than the over-60s (24%). Yet they are conversely more likely to report feeling anxious (72%) than over-60s (54%). A separate survey by the British Red Cross, reported in The Guardian, found that 28% of Britons are worried that no one would notice if something happened to them during the pandemic. ONS/The Daily Telegraph…

Washington DC Covid warning: Dr Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert advising the White House, has warned that coronavirus infections are surging owing to states reopening too quickly, without adequate test and trace systems. On Monday, global stock markets fell sharply after the US reported more than 25,000 new cases for the fifth day in a row. The rate of new infection is falling in the northeast and the midwest, but rising in parts of the south and west that were early to reopen – especially Florida, Texas and Arizona. This week, President Trump came under fire from health experts for holding two major campaign ralllies, one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the second in Phoenix, Arizona. Although the attendance in Tulsa was lower than expected, at 6,200, it was the…

“Writing about the lockdown, Tom Stoppard said it was the life he’d always wanted: ‘social distancing without social disapproval’. All those events you no longer had to dress up for, prepare for, all those encounters you’d no longer have to anticipate. Many of us are far more ambivalent about resuming ‘normal’ life than we like to acknowledge. We are capable of celebrating just a little when the dinner party host rings to disappoint us at short notice. The disappearance of even pleasurable dates from the diary represents both a sadness but also a simplification. Soon some of us will pine for the days of silent streets and cancelled commitments.” David Aaronovitch in The Times…

Let the young go to the head of the queue Polly Toynbee The Guardian “The politics of age may be about to shift,” says Polly Toynbee. For the past decade, pensioners have done nicely from the Tories’ triple-lock policy, under which the state pension rises by either 2.5%, the rate of national earnings growth or the rate of inflation – whichever is higher. But next year this pledge will have to be suspended, when the return to work of millions of furloughed staff is likely to induce a freak rise (as much as 18%) in national earnings. There’s simply no justification for giving pensioners such a “gigantic uplift” at a time when so many people’s livelihoods are at risk from a lockdown introduced mainly to protect the elderly. No, the…

I can see what you say Researchers in Israel have come up with a unique eavesdropping technique: they can hear what people conversing in a lighted room are saying just by training a telescope on a light bulb. Sound waves create miniscule vibrations on the glass surface of light bulbs, which in turn cause tiny flickers in light emissions – flickers which, though invisible to the eye, can be detected by sensitive telescopes. The researchers have created a device that converts the flicker variations into a computer-readable digital format. To test the device, the team positioned a telescope 25 metres from a 12-watt LED lightbulb in a room in an office block, and found they were able to recognise The Beatles’ Let It Be, which was playing, and to transcribe…

The former Tory MP Terry Dicks, who died last week, first stood for Parliament in 1979. By coincidence, his rival for the seat in Bristol was Labour’s Michael Cocks, who had spent three years as chief whip in the Callaghan government. Seeking to make light of their unfortunate names, Cocks told prospective voters: “Whoever you vote for, you will elect a prick.” Donald Trump has faced a string of explosive claims about his presidency in a new book by John Bolton, his hawkish former national security adviser. But perhaps the most bizarre is that in 2018, the president developed an “inordinate interest” in sending a CD of the song Rocket Man, signed by Elton John himself, to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Having repeatedly referred to Kim as the…

“Is Google unavailable at the Foreign Office,” wondered Janice Turner in The Times. “Is there a government media blackout?” How else to explain Dominic Raab’s glib suggestion, on a radio show last week, that “taking the knee” has its origins in the TV show Game of Thrones. He wouldn’t, he said, be kneeling in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, as it seemed to him to represent “subjugation” – adding, with a chuckle, that he has only bent to “the Queen and the missus”. It’s unfortunate that we live in an age of “compulsory pieties”. If a brand or celebrity fails publicly to express their horror at racism, they’re assumed to not care about it. We see the same sort of thing every October, when the poppy police hunt…

If the Bank is guilty... To The Guardian It is good news, and about time, that the Bank of England acknowledged and apologised for some of its former employees who profited from slavery. It is strange, however, that the Guardian report does not mention the Bank’s most important slave-trading member, Sir Humphry Morice. He was a director of the Bank of England from 1716, and governor in the 1720s. He was also a leading slave trader. Morice is the London equivalent of Bristol’s Edward Colston and deserves the same sort of attention we have given to Colston. He was responsible for shipping more than 25,000 Africans to the Caribbean. One thing the Bank could do to make its apology real rather than token would be to pay for the extensive…

Commercial galleries reopen For art lovers, things are finally starting to return to normal, says J.J. Charlesworth in ArtReview. Last week, London’s commercial galleries began to open their shutters, often on an appointment-only basis. Gagosian’s Mayfair outpost, for example, is now showing some intriguing sculptures in metal made by artists Charles Ray, Urs Fischer and John Chamberlain. Across Piccadilly, Thomas Dane is exhibiting a series of paintings by LA artist Ella Kruglyanskaya; she subverts “glamorous stereotypes from bygone ages of femininity”. David Zwirner has laid on a display of “mystically lucid” works on paper by Paul Klee, accompanied by some photos of the artist taken after his work was branded “degenerate” by the Nazis. You might have to wear a mask, and go to the trouble of phoning up before…

Thanks to her efforts, Lilian’s horses are losing weight, but it’s the opposite for her as Justin keeps cooking rich meals. With business on hold, Justin is bored, and Lilian’s attempts to keep him busy are only irritating him. Still, her plan to get him interested in his family tree seems to have worked. Kate is teaching Jakob yoga online, in preparation for launching her own classes – but what should her USP be? She has a call with the GP to talk about the bad sleep and moodiness she has experienced lately. Kate has missed Jakob while isolating with Peggy, and Jakob admits to himself that he has missed her too – even her chaos! Lilian’s plan to keep Justin out of the kitchen is working. The GP tells…

The strawberry conundrum Wimbledon’s strawberry surplus… The cancellation of this year’s Wimbledon (for the first time since the Second World War) isn’t just a big loss for tennis fans, says Shanti Das in The Times. It’s also a headache for Wimbledon’s long-term strawberry supplier – Hugh Lowe Farms in Mereworth, Kent – which must now find alternative buyers for the nearly two million strawberries it had earmarked for the championship. Grown in polytunnels and glasshouses, the fruit are normally picked before dawn each day, then driven the 45 miles to SW19. This year’s crop had already been planted when the decision was taken in April to cancel Wimbledon – leaving the farm with the prospect of a massive glut on its hands in the first two weeks of July. “I’m…

UMI balance trainer Great for adding core strengthening to any exercise, this bouncy half ball comes with two detachable resistance bands for curls and rows. It’s made from a puncture-resistant PVC material and comes with a workout guide (£65; amazon.co.uk). TRX Move System These suspension-based straps are a compact alternative to dumbbells. You attach them to a tree branch or pole, and use them to do a range of exercises, from squat jumps and lunges to pull-ups. The set includes a link to six video workouts (£80; store. trxtraining.co.uk). Ultrasport F-Bike This foldable exercise bike weighs 14kg, so can be moved in and out of the garden easier than most. It has eight different resistance levels, is smooth and easy to use and has a simple LCD screen (£109; amazon.co.uk).…

Fears of a second wave of the pandemic put a dampener on markets globally midweek, following a flare-up of cases in the US. Sentiment was also hit by the prospect of renewed trade friction between the US and Europe after Washington threatened new tariffs on $3.1bn of European products – including British biscuits. The IMF lowered its global growth forecast for 2020, predicting a decline of almost 5%. It predicts the UK will shrink by over 10% this year – one of the world’s severest declines, but not as steep as those forecast for Italy, France and Spain. The price of gold, hovering at around $1,770/oz, came close to an eight-year high. Britain and Japan renewed their discussion of a post-Brexit trade deal. Japanese negotiators have reportedly given the UK…

● The latest stats Just as we were preparing to pull the plug on the British economy this year, along comes a piece of cheering news, said Joe Curtis on City AM. The UK “looks set to return to growth” in the third quarter between June and September –according to the latest IHS Markit Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which reports that output in June is now back at a “four-month high”. Arguably, anything looks good compared with April’s dire figures, which posted the biggest economic collapse in recorded history with growth plunging by 20.4%. But June saw a record rise in the PMI for a “second successive month”, confirming that the economy is “moving closer to stabilising”, said IHS economist Chris Williamson. ● Demand dilemma One of the big problems…

Alasdhair Willis All change at the upmarket Wellington boot brand Hunter, where creative director Alasdhair Willis is off to stomp pastures new, says the Daily Mail. Willis, who is married to designer Stella McCartney, joined the Queen’s official bootmaker in 2013, and is credited with transforming the company from a huntin’, shootin’ stalwart to a glamorous fashion and festival “lifestyle giant”. Two years ago, at the peak of its celebrity makeover, Hunter reported profits of £6.3m on record sales of £113.8m. However, it has since been laid low by “poor winter sales in the US” and by the Covid-19 pandemic. Founded in 1856 as the North British Rubber Company, Hunter has seen many incarnations in its history. Time, perhaps, for a return to the clod? Emma Watson The Harry Potter…

Deprived of their luxury holidays abroad, wealthy Britons have been installing private pools at home during lockdown. Specialist companies say that enquiries about their pools, which cost at least £90,000, are up as much as threefold. They also report a surge of buyers looking for restaurant-quality outdoor kitchens. These can cost £60,000; some have underfloor heating. Sales of sweet treats and tea have shot up during lockdown, Waitrose reports. Searches for scones are up 510% on the same period last year, while searches for iced cupcakes are up 300% and biscuits 379%. Sales of loose leaf teas are up 10%, with tea pots up by 32%, while at John Lewis, sales of cake stands are up by 67%.…

A cross-party group of MPs has asked the Government to “urgently intervene” to force airlines and holiday companies to pay refunds for cancelled trips. In a letter to the Department for Transport, the 30 MPs wrote that many people who were already “facing financial problems of their own” were “struggling to get the money they are owed”. Many customers have been offered vouchers, but fear they could end up with nothing if the business goes bust. MPs say companies are “openly breaking the law by refusing refunds or failing to offer one within the required period”.…

Edinburgh Lockdown easing: Lockdown restrictions were further relaxed in Scotland last week, after Nicola Sturgeon declared that “substantial” progress had been made in controlling Covid-19. People in Scotland can now meet up outside with members of two other households, in groups of up to eight. People who live alone, and single-parent families, can form an “extended group” with another household, and meet inside. Places of worship have reopened, and from 29 June non-essential shops, outdoor markets and playgrounds will be able to open. If all goes well, people will be able to meet indoors from 10 July, and hairdressers, pubs, restaurants and holiday accommodation will open from 15 July. The government said it was looking into the feasibility of reducing the two-metre rule, and it has made a conditional promise…

Hollywood’s unlikely star Jesse Eisenberg wasn’t really cut out to be an actor. The film star, who made his name playing Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, suffers from stage fright. “Nothing causes me more stress than doing a live performance,” he told Ed Potton in The Times. “I really only act in theatre because I write my plays and have to get them produced.” He’s also burdened by OCD. “I don’t step on cracks; if I’m going onto a new surface – be it carpet to concrete, or concrete to wood – I have to make sure all parts of my feet touch the ground equally before I touch that new thing.” Nor were his family keen to see him tread the boards. His father is a professor, his…

A man in Vienna has been hit with a e500 fine after breaking wind “with full intent” in front of police. The miscreant was fined for “violating public decency” earlier this month. Defending the penalty on Twitter, Austrian police said: “Of course no one is reported for accidentally ‘letting one go’.” But in this case, the man had behaved “provocatively and uncooperatively” during the encounter with officers: he rose from a park bench and “let go a massive intestinal wind, apparently with full intent”, police said. “And our colleagues don’t like to be farted at so much.” A “hug tunnel” has been installed at a care home in virus-ravaged Brazil to enable elderly residents to cuddle their loved ones safely. Staff at the Três Figueiras home in Rio Grande do…

NORTH KOREA The Supreme Leader is running scared The Chosun Ilbo (Seoul) North Korea must be getting desperate, says The Chosun Ilbo. Two years ago, South Korea spent £7m opening a liaison office in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, to aid dialogue between the countries in the absence of formal diplomatic ties. But Kim Yo Jong – sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un – recently called the office “useless” during a row over defectors’ plans to drop propaganda leaflets over the North’s border; and the building was duly blown up. The gesture was accompanied by a threat from North Korea’s vast army to redeploy troops to demilitarised zones on the border. But Kim isn’t trying to start a war; he’s desperately trying to keep his regime…

Do birds perceive a more brightly coloured world than we do? To test this proposition, a team of scientists led by Mary Caswell Stoddard of Princeton University devised a set of experiments on hummingbirds. Humans, like other mammals, have three specialist colour cells (or cones) in the retina, which are sensitive to red, green and blue light. This means that they can only see colours in the visible spectrum. (Purple, evoked by a combination of red and blue light, not by a single wavelength, is the exception.) Birds, reptiles and fish, on the other hand, have an extra cone sensitive to ultraviolet light. So, theoretically, they should be able to perceive an extra range of non-spectral colours, such as ultraviolet+yellow and ultraviolet+red. And so it proved in the experiments, which…

Three years after the Manchester bombing, the residents of Reading are now asking themselves the same questions, said Mark Almond in the Daily Mail: “Why us? Why here?” Last Saturday, a man with a knife ran amok in a park where people were enjoying the evening sun on the longest day of the year. The suspect, 25-year-old Khairi Saadallah, has been arrested on suspicion of killing three men: a local teacher, James Furlong; a scientist, David Wails; and an American lawyer, Joe Ritchie-Bennett. Three others were wounded. Like the Manchester bomber, Saadallah is a refugee from Libya, a failed state that has lately “become the perfect laboratory for indoctrination and terrorist training”. He arrived in Britain eight years ago and has previously been convicted of minor non-terrorist offences. He was…

“The sense that the Government is not in control of events in the pandemic is nowhere more palpable than in education,” said The Times. Since the start of lockdown, millions of children “have been missing out on aspects of their education that they will never get back”. During that time, there have been vain promises – of access to computers for those who need it, for instance. There have been U-turns: the Government announced that English primary schools would return on 1 June, then capitulated in the face of union objections. But there is no evidence of plans to tackle the “not insurmountable” problems of reopening classrooms for all pupils while observing social-distancing rules. “It is a mystery what Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, is actually doing. From the outside,…

To The Guardian When working with the Department for International Development (DfID) in Freetown on getting 22,000 small traders on their feet again after Ebola, I thought that this was revitalising the Sierra Leonean economy, but was I actually only part of some “giant cashpoint in the sky”? I thought when we brought clean water and new toilets to Ethiopia with UK aid that we were improving the health of the population. I thought that when we arranged for the education of children in Syria we were bringing hope to children. Did it never occur to you, Mr Johnson, that the reason UK aid is so effective is because it insists on rigour based on outcomes – a rigour which you have demonstrated, in your mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis,…

Norah Jones: Pick Me Up Off The Floor Virgin EMI/ Blue Note £11 Norah Jones hit the jackpot with the “jazzy supper-club soul” of her 2002 debut, Come Away with Me: it sold 27 million copies and won five Grammys, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. But since then, the artist unkindly known as “Snorah Jones” has often seemed stuck in an easy-listening rut. So it’s an “unexpected pleasure” to hear her stretch herself on this collection of songs rejected from previous albums. These tracks “are the (slightly) weird ones that got away, where Jones took risks and allowed herself greater depth of expression”. It’s her most “interesting and emotionally resonant album in years”. This collection “won’t frighten any dinner-party guests”, but it does move Jones’s music on, agreed David…

Lockdown, ICUs, PPE, track-and-trace, quarantine – The Salisbury Poisonings was written last year, but this three-part BBC drama feels “eerily prescient”, said Michael Hogan in The Daily Telegraph. In 2018, Russian agents arrived in Salisbury, intent on killing former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. But this drama isn’t really about them: its focus is the response to the public health emergency caused by their botched mission. At the centre of it is Tracy Daszkiewicz, Wiltshire’s director of public health (a “warmly believable” Anne-Marie Duff) battling to protect the residents of the Cathedral city from traces of the lethal nerve agent Novichok. The script is “admirably restrained”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Instead of “hysteria and drama with a capital D”, we see the authorities facing up…

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, 1916 (Penguin £6.99). I read this when I was 17, and it seemed as if Joyce had stolen it from my diary – if only I’d been able to express a small portion of what he’d recorded. Herzog by Saul Bellow, 1964 (Penguin £9.99). Bellow, regarded as the Great American Novelist in the late 1960s, was from Chicago and Jewish, as I was, and an acquaintance of my father’s. That added hugely to the intrigue of his work. But the power of his prose is what stands out: the flight from the colloquial to the high-flown and back in the same sentence, and the savage power of Bellow’s concern with ideas. The Power and the Glory by Graham…

Tom Stoppard and Phoebe Waller-Bridge were among the 100 or so writers, directors and actors who, last week, signed an open letter to the Government asking for emergency relief funding to save British theatres. Meanwhile, the theatres soldier on by taking live performances online. In Old Vic: In Camera, the theatre hosts performances streamed live, with a backdrop of the empty auditorium. In the first production, Claire Foy and Matt Smith return for a limited run of 2019’s hit Lungs (until 4 July), followed by a series of rehearsed play-readings; tickets from £20 (oldvictheatre.com).…

These fishballs, full of magical childhood flavours, were regularly cooked for me by my mother when I was young, says Olia Hercules. Now they are also enjoyed by my son, especially when they come with mash (they’re also good at room temperature, served over some couscous). Whenever I eat them, I always think back to my childhood home in southern Ukraine, where I passed happy days reading and eating – which are still my favourite pastimes Serves 2 (makes 10 fishballs) 1 small onion, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, roughly chopped 300g fillet of pollack or similar 1-2 tbsp fine semolina a little beaten egg (optional) 2 tbsp rapeseed or vegetable oil sea salt and black pepper for the tomato sauce: 1 tbsp rapeseed oil 1 small onion, finely diced…

The “Forces’ Sweetheart” who helped Britain win the War Dame Vera Lynn 1917-2020 Dame Vera Lynn, who has died at the age of 103, was the “Forces’ sweetheart” during the Second World War, and became a lasting symbol of Britain’s wartime spirit. When British officers imprisoned in Colditz raided the castle’s wine cellar after being liberated by the Americans at the end of the War, it was to Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt and Vera Lynn that they raised their glasses. British troops in every conflict zone tuned into her radio show, Sincerely Yours, to listen to her unusually deep-voiced renditions of We’ll Meet Again, The White Cliffs of Dover and other heartfelt songs of hope. Tall and blonde but with protruding teeth, her attraction lay less in her looks than…

Until this week, the Government could block takeovers on grounds of “national security, media plurality and financial stability”, said Cat Rutter Pooley in the Financial Times. Now there’s a fourth criterion: MPs have rushed through a vote to tighten the rules protecting “companies deemed critical to the UK’s pandemic response” – particularly when approached by firms based in countries thought “unfriendly to the national interest”. The new “red lines” came into force on Wednesday, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. “Not before time.” Covid has rammed home the crucial role of Britain’s life-sciences companies as “adjuncts to public policy”. When Public Health England was under siege, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca “came to the rescue with testing labs”. Latterly, both these pharma flagships have been “working 24/7” on vaccines. AZ, which…

Samsung Rising by Geoffrey Cain (Virgin £14.99). The entertaining story of Apple’s great rival – a gripping tale of “dynastic wrangling, tycoon scandals and deal-making”, which gives a “compelling insight into the rough and tumble of South Korean business”. Reimagining Capitalism: How Business Can Save the World by Rebecca Henderson (Portfolio Penguin £20). The pandemic adds weight to Henderson’s message about the need for a “systematic rethink of capitalism”. Her emphasis on the cooperation and collaboration between “purpose-driven companies”, governments and communities is particularly timely. Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction by David Enrich (Custom House £20). A vivid exploration of the dysfunction at Germany’s largest bank as it tried to grow into a global powerhouse. “A devastating tale of a big bank gone…

The week’s best shares Concurrent Technologies The Mail on Sunday Trading remains robust for this “proudly British”, innovative computer-maker. Customers are sticky, with 60% of revenues coming from defence, the order book is strong, and there’s plenty of growth potential. Buy. 108p. Eckoh Investors Chronicle The online payments firm has its “foot in the door” of a giant industry as commerce accelerates its move to contactless payment and remote online transactions. Tightening data rules are a positive. Buy. 62p. Informa The Sunday Telegraph This well-run event organiser has reshaped its calendar: cancelling, postponing and switching to digital gettogethers. Cost-cutting and a £1bn share placement should ease the “long road back”. Buy. 495.3p. Nestlé Investors Chronicle Brands including Felix, KitKat and Nescafé have been driving growth and impressive cash generation at…

The Amritsar massacre was one of the most notorious acts in the history of the British empire. On 13 April 1919, a large crowd of unarmed men, women and children gathered in Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden near the northwest Indian city’s Golden Temple, a sacred site for Sikhs. Many were there to protest the arrest of two Indian nationalist leaders; others were there simply to celebrate the festival of Baisakhi. Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, Amritsar’s military commander entered the Bagh at 7.30pm with 90 colonial troops, blocked the main exits and opened fire without warning. “Shots were fired into the thick of the meeting,” one eyewitness recalled. “Many got trampled under the feet of the rushing crowds... Blood was pouring in profusion.” About 1,650 rounds were fired, over ten…

Football: the Premier League’s quiet return “Well, here we are again,” said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. The return of the Premier League last Wednesday was “technically a resumption”, the conclusion to a season that began ten months “and one global health trauma” ago. Yet in reality it felt like “something self-contained and entirely other”: football as a “high-speed entertainment product, sealed within its bubble”. So what’s in store over the next four weeks? Well, there’ll be no dramatic race for the title. Liverpool has it in the bag and could lift the trophy as soon as this week. However, there is still the competition for Champions League places; and at the bottom of the table there’s a “potentially fraught relegation fight” between four clubs separated, as of last weekend,…