Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1288 i The Week

What happened Banning Huawei In a move that has infuriated Beijing, the Government announced that the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei will be banned from supplying new equipment for Britain’s 5G phone networks from next year. Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, also said that existing Huawei kit must be stripped out of the network by 2027: new US sanctions that bar Huawei from using reliable non-Chinese suppliers meant it was no longer safe to use its equipment in British infrastructure, he said. The decision, welcomed by Donald Trump, is a U-turn by the Government: in January, Boris Johnson had given Huawei the green light for involvement in the 5G network. Beijing has reacted with veiled threats, saying that Britain had failed a “litmus test” for future trade deals with China. But…

Primark, which won plaudits for not taking advantage of the Government’s job retention scheme. Having brought back all its 30,000 or so staff from furlough, the retailer could have asked for a handout of £30m. John Lewis has indicated that it won’t be applying for the money either (see page 41). The radish, after the humble root vegetable was named as the perfect partner for champagne by a French chemist, who has spent half a century analysing such matters. Jacques Puisais, 93, says it’s the peppery piquancy of radish that makes it so good. Museums, with news that London’s “big three” – the Natural History and Science Museums and the V&A – will start reopening in August. Places will have to be booked online, and numbers are likely to be…

Half of UK voters say they have formed a more favourable view of the Labour Party since Keir Starmer took over as leader in April. 52% of voters say they can imagine Starmer inside No. 10. However, asked who they trust to run the economy as a pair, 42% named Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, and only 26% chose Starmer and shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds. Overall, the Tories now lead Labour by 42% to 38%; in late March, they led by 54% to 28%. Opinium/The Observer 64% of Britons say they would not currently feel safe travelling by plane because of the coronavirus. Last month, only 40% said they wouldn’t feel safe, suggesting fears of a second wave might be growing. YouGov/The Times…

Sacramento, California Covid cases soar: California reimposed lockdown measures this week, in response to a surge in cases of Covid-19. Governor Gavin Newsom ordered an immediate statewide cessation of indoor dining at restaurants, and the closure of bars and museums. In 29 counties, including Los Angeles, malls, churches and hairdressers have also been closed, along with many offices. For a week, California had been registering an average of about 8,000 new cases a day, more than double the number a month ago. This week, three southern states registered record daily death tolls. In Florida, where 132 deaths were registered on Tuesday, and new cases are running at more than 10,000 a day, officials warned that hospitals were at risk of being overrun. Last weekend, President Trump finally wore a face…

1 Lift Me by Frode Jacobsen, performed by Madrugada and Ane Brun 2 No Harm by Maxwell Ravitz, Henriette Motzfeldt and Anne Stoltenberg, performed by Smerz 3 So Long, Marianne, written and performed by Leonard Cohen 4 Hungry Heart, written and performed by Bruce Springsteen 5 Make You Feel My Love by Bob Dylan, performed by Ane Brun 6* Til Ungdommen, based on the poem by Nordahl Grieg, with music composed by Otto Mortensen, performed by Ingebjørg Bratland 7 Free Nelson Mandela by Jerry Dammers, performed by The Special A.K.A. 8 From Up Here by Kevin Salem and Ingrid Olava, performed by Ingrid Olava Book: a statistics textbook Luxury: a pair of skis * Choice if allowed only one record…

On 20 August 1940, at the crisis point of the Battle of Britain, Churchill lauded the RAF pilots with the famous words: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” About 3,000 RAF, Fleet Air Arm and Royal Canadian Air Force aircrew served in the battle. Many were in their teens: the average age of RAF fighter pilots killed was 22; only the young had the reflexes for duels at closing speeds of 600mph. It was very dangerous. Over 114 days of conflict, one in five Fighter Command pilots died, many in accidents: about 20% of losses on both sides were accidental. Esprit de corps was, however, generally good. One Spitfire squadron commander told a new recruit in September 1940: “We…

Harry Potter and the turn to matricide Helen Lewis The Atlantic It’s hard learning to be an adult, says Helen Lewis. And we need to bear that in mind when trying to understand one of the stranger aspects of today’s culture wars: the demonisation of J.K. Rowling. The level of hatred directed at her on social media for remarking that “woman” should remain a biological category is, on the face of it, extraordinary. This month, two major Harry Potter fan groups announced they’d be removing photographs of her from their websites. To understand the intensity of this reaction, you have to realise that transgender rights are as much an article of faith for young millennials (that is to say, those who, like Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson,…

Figures released by NHS England have highlighted the strain the Covid-19 crisis has placed on hospital care, says the Daily Mail. In May, just 54,550 people were admitted for routine operations, down from 295,881 in the same month the previous year. Meanwhile, waiting times for routine tests rose dramatically: in May this year, 571,459 patients who needed a key diagnostic test had been waiting at least six weeks, compared with 43,230 in May 2019. In the same month, urgent cancer referrals were 47% lower than the previous year, and cancer treatment waiting times hit an all-time high: only 47.9% of people diagnosed after a screening appointment had started treatment within the target time of two months. In June, A&E attendances were up slightly from the previous month (1,411,312 compared with…

“The critical period in matrimony is breakfast time.” A.P. Herbert, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle “To err is human – but it feels divine.” Mae West, quoted in Forbes “An actor who doesn’t say yes to everything is really making a mistake.” Dermot Mulroney, quoted in The Guardian “I’m cancel-proof in the sense that I’ve got enough money.” Ricky Gervais, quoted in The Sunday Times “No animal should ever jump up on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.” Fran Lebowitz, quoted in the Montreal Gazette “Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.” André Maurois, quoted in The Independent “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough,…

An all-rounder duel England’s first Test against West Indies at Southampton’s Rose Bowl was a reminder of “just how ruddy glorious Test cricket can be”, said Ali Martin in The Guardian. It was “a sporting box-set consumed over five days”. And at 5.53pm on Sunday, the final day, West Indies wrapped up “a famous four-wicket victory”. All eyes were on the two “box-office captain all-rounders”: Jason Holder and Ben Stokes (who was deputising for Joe Root). Stokes was unable to lead England to victory, but still put in a champion’s performance, coming close to scoring a half-century in each innings and taking six wickets. However, it was Holder who ultimately “edged” the duel: his seven wickets across the match (and six for 42 runs in the first innings) showed why…

Willie Nelson: First Rose of Spring Legacy Recordings £10 Willie Nelson, the “Texan country outlaw” and “legendary stoner” (he even has his own brand of marijuana, Willie’s Reserve), is “three years short of his tenth decade”, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. But to judge from this “lovely album” – his seventieth – he is “forever young”. First Rose of Spring finds Nelson in grand form, looking back on his life with wistfulness and an “easy rolling spirit”. His gentle take on Toby Keith’s Don’t Let the Old Man In, for example, is a “sweet reminder” not to let yourself “become a grumpy git”. The tone is “reflective and wry, though never maudlin”, said David Cheal in the FT. “If the end is in sight, Nelson is moving towards it…

The anti-feminist campaigner Phyllis Schlafly was viewed as an extremist even in her 1970s heyday, so portraying her sympathetically was a challenge – but one to which Cate Blanchett rises magnificently in Mrs. America, said Ed Cumming in The Independent. Mobilising a vocal, nationwide army of “homemakers” against the US Equal Rights Amendment, Blanchett’s Schlafly is charming, shrewd and formidably intelligent, buttoned up in pastel, and “alternating stares that could melt steel with a smile visible from space”. An expert on nuclear policy, she is patronised by male politicians and harassed by sex pests (including her own husband), yet denies that she’s ever faced discrimination. She is a hypocrite, but she’s not made into a villain. The series also showcases the “grit” of the women who opposed her, said Barbara…

The journalist and co-presenter of the hit podcast The High Low chooses her favourite books. Her debut collection of essays, How Do We Know We’re Doing it Right?, is out now, published by Hutchinson at £14.99 Boy by Roald Dahl, 1984 (Puffin £6.99). Dahl is most famous for his children’s books, but my favourites are the delightfully weird Kiss Kiss and his autobiography, Boy. There is a line in the latter about Dahl’s nose being basically sliced off that I became revoltingly obsessed with as a child. You never really knew what was true, or fable – and that just added to the gorgeous whimsy of it all. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, 2015 (Picador £9.99). Throat-punchingly devastating and incredibly moving, this is a lyrical, minutely observed novel about…

In its 125th year, the BBC Proms “has pulled a rabbit out of the hat” by coming up with a new lockdown format (Daily Telegraph). The two-part season, launching this weekend, consists of eight weeks of archive Proms recordings on Radio 3 and on BBC Four, followed by two weeks of live concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, from 28 August. Details of the latter are yet to be finalised, but the line-up includes Nicola Benedetti, Simon Rattle and Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Highlights from the archives include a 2007 performance by Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Orchestra (23 Aug, BBC4). Until 12 September (bbc. co.uk/proms).…

Salt-baked beetroot The earthy beetroot in this dish balances perfectly with the sweetness of the cabernet sauvignon vinegar and the bite of the goat’s cheese, says David Carter. An excellent accompaniment to barbecued meat, it works equally well as a vegetarian main course. In 2013, David Carter quit his job as a restaurant front-of-house manager and travelled to Texas to buy a 4.5-tonne smoker. After shipping it back to England, he began selling American-style barbecued meat at festivals and street food venues before launching Smokestak as a bricks-and-mortar venue in London’s Shoreditch in 2017. Although best known for its slow-cooked meats, Smokestak offers plenty of choice to vegetarians – and these salt-baked beets often feature on its menu. Carter has just launched a delivery service, Smokestak at home, shipping smoked…

Britain’s seven biggest accountancy firms – including the dominant Big Four, KPMG, EY, PwC and Deloitte – were criticised by the industry regulator for the “unacceptable” quality of their audits. A review found that one in three were substandard. Some lenders restarted mortgages for borrowers with only 10% deposits – a sign of greater confidence in the housing market. Landlords welcomed the Chancellor’s decision to include them in his stamp duty cut on up to £500,000 of purchases. Ocado announced half-year sales above £1bn for the first time, and chief executive Tim Steiner said that shoppers “won’t be going back” following the pandemic, which boosted online retail. But the online grocer made a £40.6m loss, due to heavy spending on robotic warehouses. A closely-watched adland survey, the IPA Bellwether, found…

● Bullish on bullion The price of gold has risen strongly this year, said Shane Hickey in The Observer, from about $1,500 an ounce to $1,800 now. Some goldbugs think the metal will soon pass its all-time high (nearly $1,918) of 2011. And since the pound has weakened since then, gold has already set a new record in sterling terms – touching £1,455 in May. Why the surge? “Basically gold does well when other stuff does badly in the historical sweep of things,” says Adrian Ash, director of research at BullionVault, an online trading platform for precious metals. This year’s turbulence has seen institutional and retail investors pile in to the safe haven asset, pushing the price up. ● Risky safe haven “Perhaps the best reason to question gold’s rally…

Hendrik du Toit Listing a company on the stock market is “not for the faint-hearted at the best of times”, says Michael O’Dywer in The Sunday Telegraph. So how about floating an asset management business in mid-March, just as global markets crashed and the global economy was juddering to a halt? Hendrik du Toit, the 58-year-old South African financier who has cut Investec Asset Management loose from its parent bank – and relaunched it as Ninety One – somehow remains positive. “I learned one thing on the sports pitch: if you go for it, you have to go for it,” says du Toit, an ex-rugby player and a marathon runner. “The train had left the station. We were going, we were going to keep running.” Poppy Gustafsson The origins of…

The growth of returner programmes has enabled hundreds of experienced women with science, technology and engineering skills to get their careers back on track after multi-year career breaks. The career break penalty Despite longstanding initiatives to attract more female graduates into STEM, if these women step out of their roles in mid-career for an extended period – for childcare, eldercare, health or other reasons – they tend to fall off the corporate radar. When these women do decide to resume their careers, they face the ‘career break penalty’, labelled as risky candidates by recruiters biased against a lack of recent experience. Women returners struggle to find roles at a suitable level, and are told they are over-qualified for more junior positions. Widespread rejection further erodes the low professional confidence that…

Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right president of Brazil, after he was pictured being bitten by a large flightless bird as he strolled the grounds of his official residence. Bolsonaro, who is self-isolating with Covid-19, had stopped to feed the bird when it attacked him – to the general merriment of his critics on social media. “Well done comrade emu,” wrote one, though it was actually a rhea. Great Danes, after the Kennel Club warned that registrations for the dogs have plummeted to their lowest level in 50 years. Demand for Great Danes surged in the 1970s, thanks in part to the popularity of the cartoon character Scooby Doo, but since then, families have increasingly favoured small breeds.…

Portobello, Edinburgh Swordfish sighting: A swordfish has been sighted swimming in the Firth of Forth, off the coast of Portobello, outside Edinburgh. It is believed to be only the third time a swordfish has been spotted in Scottish waters, and its presence has delighted locals. But scientists point out that it also highlights how climate change has altered marine habitats: swordfish, which can grow up to four metres, normally inhabit more temperate parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. There are now fears that the fish, which probably arrived in pursuit of mackerel, will be targeted by trophy-hunting fishermen. Mathon, Herefordshire Farm quarantine: Around 200 workers on a farm in Herefordshire were told to self-isolate on site last week after 73 of them tested positive for Covid-19. Most of…

Tehran Crash report: Iran has blamed “human error” for the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet in January. The flight was hit by two missiles shortly after taking off from Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. In a report released on Saturday, the Civil Aviation Organisation said that a mobile air defence unit had misidentified the civilian plane as a hostile object, as a result of a failure to re-align radar equipment. This resulted in a “107 degree error in the system”, setting off a “hazard chain” of further errors made in the moments before the airliner was shot down. Iran’s military had been on high alert at the time: hours earlier, the country had fired ballistic missiles at two US bases in Iraq in retaliation for the…

“As a species, we’ve been treating each other like shit from the year dot. The horrors to which we’ve subjected one another, including slavery, are so incomprehensibly dreadful that no one could conceivably bear the crushing weight of all that torture, mass murder and sadism. If guilt is inherited, every last one of us should be condemned to Dante’s nine circles of hell. None of us chose the world in which we emerged. We didn’t select which awful history soaks the ground at our feet. It’s entirely sensible to feel regret about the likes of slavery and to be informed about the past. But claiming that what happened before you were born is all your fault is not only ridiculous. It’s vain.” Lionel Shriver in The Spectator…

We call them heroes but treat them like dirt Aditya Chakrabortty The Guardian “I and my colleagues may have no other choice except to kill people.” Those words, spoken by one of the care workers I interviewed last week, tell us more about the “lethal mess” into which social care in Britain has descended than any statistic, says Aditya Chakrabortty. A graduate in public health, Grace belongs to that large, overlooked set of front-line heroes who care for the old and frail in their own homes. But like so many of her colleagues, she works on a zero-hours contract: if she isn’t given work, she doesn’t earn. And the choice she refers to above can be summed up in three words: Statutory Sick Pay. Sick pay in the UK is…

1066 didn’t change everything The Norman Conquest was a watershed in English history, transforming the country’s political and social orders. But its impact on daily life appears to have been rather less marked, a study of medieval diets has suggested. To find out what ordinary people were eating between the 10th and 13th centuries, scientists from Sheffield and Cardiff Universities conducted isotope analysis on 36 human skeletons found at various locations near Oxford; they also examined residues on cooking pots and analysed an assortment of animal bones unearthed in the area. Writing in the journal Plos One, they report that despite the convulsions gripping the country, the chemical markers left in their skeletons suggest the food people ate didn’t much change in that period. Cabbage, goat and mutton were mainstays…

Face masks: do they make us safer? A recurring theme of this crisis has been the nature of the Government’s guidance: “clear as mud” would sum it up, said Tom Peck in The Independent. To take a recent example, if you watched Boris Johnson’s “People’s PMQs” on Facebook last Friday, you’ll know you should “go back to work if you can”; and if you saw Michael Gove reiterating that message on Sky News on Sunday, you might have dusted down your pinstripe and walked sorrowfully to the bus stop the next morning. But if you didn’t – and were going by the Government’s official guidance, which was “work from home if you can” – you may have spent another week in your PJs. Similarly, last week No. 10 briefed…

He was one of the most colourful characters to appear in professional football, said Ivan Ponting in The Independent. Jack Charlton, who died last week at the age of 85, was a “feistily combative” defender, who hit “unexpectedly rarefied heights” as part of the England team that won the World Cup in 1966, and went on to become a charismatic international manager. Everything about Big Jack was distinctive: “the gawky, giraffe-like frame; the rich northeastern tones”. And while he could certainly be “cantankerous and tactless”, he was “widely liked and almost universally respected”. Charlton’s career almost went in another direction entirely, said Michael Foley in The Sunday Times. Born in Ashington, in Northumberland, he started working in the local colliery, alongside his father, when he was 15. But he soon…

Shake-up universities... To the Financial Times The Institute for Fiscal Studies highlights the plight of many universities due to the Covid-19 crisis, and the expected serious shortfall in tuition fees – especially from foreign students. There is much talk about the sector being saved and of a bailout for parts of it. Maybe. But there are serious management problems which have led to total dependence on fee income from the poorest students in the world, who are charged extra, often herded into large classes and offered inferior programmes. Universities are run like corporates without corporate governance, and there is no accountability. Management is excessively rewarded, largely in undisclosed emoluments. It protects itself using public funds, has lost the confidence of staff and students, and is ill-prepared for the large redundancies…

“Frustrated kids” have been able to find some relief during lockdown by seeking refuge in “imaginary worlds”, said Imogen Russell Williams in The Guardian. With the holidays approaching, reading will continue to be a lifeline over the coming weeks. So what new titles should parents seek out? For the youngest readers, aged two to four, Elephant in My Kitchen! by Smriti Halls and Ella Okstad (Egmont) offers an introduction to environmentalism, via a “cheeky rhyming romp through a house invaded by animals”. Also “delightful” is Avocado Asks by Momoko Abe (Orchard) – about an avocado trying to figure out what type of food he is, with the help of an “exuberantly confident tomato”. Preschoolers love “jaw-dropping statistics”, said Emily Bearn in The Daily Telegraph, and My First Book of Comparisons…

The past few years has seen a spate of brilliant new horror films, often from first-time directors. Such on-screen nastiness is not everyone’s cup of tea – but if you fancy a fright, here are five of the best released since 2015. All are available to stream online: Get Out British actor Daniel Kaluuya plays a young black New Yorker whose weekend trip upstate to meet his white girlfriend’s wealthy, liberal parents takes a series of unexpected turns for the worse. Directed by comedian Jordan Peele, the film is gripping but funny too, as a satire on subtle but insidious forms of racism. It Follows This 2015 film has a premise familiar from M.R. James’s story Casting the Runes – a curse that can only be lifted by passing it…

“Like news of Mark Twain’s demise, reports of the death of painting have, it seems, been greatly exaggerated,” said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. The medium may have periodically fallen out of fashion, but it has never really lost its appeal; indeed, as Radical Figures, a thrilling exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, demonstrates, recent years have seen a new wave of artists reinvigorating the form and thrusting it back into relevance. The show (which closed in March, but reopened this week) presents a broad selection of canvases by ten contemporary painters from around the world, including established artists and relative newcomers. The breadth of styles and subject matter is wildly diverse; “it’s hard to divine what, if anything, unites everyone here”. The show includes the British art star Cecily…

Tips of the week… how to create an outdoor cinema ● Many projectors are now made with outdoor screenings in mind – all-in-one wireless devices with speakers built in. Just make sure you check that the battery life is long enough for a film before you buy. ● Jeremy White, executive editor of Wired, recommends the LG CineBeam HU80KSW, which has a tower design so it doesn’t need a stand (£1,999; richersounds.com). Or for a more affordable option, the portable ViewSonic M1 (£279; amazon.co.uk). ● If you’re just planning to do a one-off screening, look into hiring a projector. ● A pale wall or pinned up sheet will do as a screen, or you can buy an inflatable one. ● Some projectors can work with wireless headphones, but if you’re…

The composer behind some of cinema’s greatest scores Ennio Morricone 1928-2020 “If ever a name was synonymous with movie soundtracks, it was Ennio Morricone,” said Adam Sweeting in The Guardian. Responsible for some of the most accomplished scores ever written, Morricone, who has died aged 91, was known for the revolutionary blend of sound effects and music he produced for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns (a term he loathed). Nominated five times for the Academy Award for best original score, he finally won it in 2016, for Quentin Tarantino’s western The Hateful Eight, when he was 87. As he went up to the podium, the audience rose to its feet. Many felt the accolade was overdue; but Morricone had always kept his distance from Hollywood. He never moved from his native…

It’s becoming ever clearer that the current cohort of 16- to 24-year-olds are at risk of becoming a blighted generation, said Charlie Mullins in City AM. So the Treasury deserves plaudits for its new “Kickstart” scheme, which will cover the wages of up to 350,000 young people for six months. The idea is not entirely novel: Labour came up with a similar scheme after the 2008 financial crisis, and it had a substantial positive impact on participants’ job prospects. But Rishi Sunak’s scheme is three times bigger, and it includes a £2,000 incentive for each new apprentice signed up. Let’s hope this presages a new focus on youth skills and training – a sorely neglected component of national prosperity. By contrast, the Chancellor’s Job Retention Bonus scheme – a £1,000…

Most retail investors will be familiar with the price/earnings ratio, which expresses a company’s share price as a multiple of its profits (“earnings”). The higher the PE, the more “expensive” the stock. More useful still is the “cyclically adjusted price earnings” ratio (Cape). “Without wishing to make your eyes glaze over”, the Cape is calculated by dividing the current share price by the average of ten years of earnings. The idea is that by smoothing out the profits picture, you get a clearer view of the firm’s long-term potential – and therefore what its shares are worth. Analysis of historic share prices suggests that the lower the Cape ratio, the higher the return on equities over the following 20 years. Which is where there’s potentially good news for investors in…

The week’s best shares C&C Group The Times The Magners cider and Tennent’s lager owner’s revamped board reacted at lightning speed to capitalise on home drinkers in lockdown. A solid relationship with brewing giant AB Inbev and a new deal with Budweiser are both “enviable”. Buy. 239p. Driver Group The Mail on Sunday Driver specialises in large construction disputes. Its “hugely varied” work includes issues with skyscrapers, oil rigs and roads. Profitable and set to expand and benefit from an infrastructure boom. Buy. 63p. Euromoney Institutional Investor The Daily Telegraph Euromoney’s strong balance sheet is boosted by its financial data subscriptions, which generate “sticky, visible” income. It’s battling the hit to its events arm by building virtual alternatives. Buy. 853p. PureTech The Sunday Times This drugs minnow, known for its…

“A good mix of experiences, skills and mindsets is what helps us to innovate and make better decisions and women in STEM is a key part of this pipeline.” An industry transforming itself: moving from a single agricultural product to a multi-category consumer electronics field - BAT is leading the way. David O’Reilly is Director, Scientific Research at BAT and is at the forefront of this change. “Our ambition is to increasingly transition our revenues over time from a product that uses combustion, to ones that do not use combustion,” he says. “In the last 10 years this has become a reality and the technology is available. We want to offer consumers a range of enjoyable and responsibly marketed products, and aim to reduce the health and environmental impacts of…

A growing number of men have been embracing the “cottagecore” trend – for rural-inspired clothing – during the pandemic, with online searches for flat caps, cardigans and smocks all soaring. Celebrities spotted sporting the look include David Beckham, who posed for an Instagram photo holding a farm stick. According to a professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster, the trend, which began in 2017, can hark back to a “romanticised ideal of masculinity”. More than half a million people have tuned into The Sound of Colleagues website, to listen to recordings of water-cooler chatter, keyboards clicking and printers whirring. The site was created as a joke in April, but has since taken off in earnest.…

Home Secretary Priti Patel has revealed that the Government’s post-Brexit points-based immigration system will include a fast-track visa for health workers. This will be open to those who have a confirmed job offer in a “skilled” role in the NHS or care sector; care workers do not qualify. The Government said it hoped British workers would fill those vacancies. The new system, which comes into effect on 1 January, also has a £20,480 minimum salary threshold for visa applicants. It grants ministers the power to deport foreign criminals who have received jail terms of more than a year, as well as persistent offenders; and grants international students the right to stay in the UK for at least two years after completing their studies.…

Paris Low-key celebrations: France held muted Bastille Day celebrations this week, in deference to the ongoing pandemic. In place of the usual military parade on the Champs Élysées, President Macron attended an event paying tribute to all key workers – from soldiers to ambulance drivers. He also unveiled a s100bn recovery plan aimed at building a “better France”, and announced that from 1 August, masks would be mandatory in all enclosed public spaces. A day earlier, the government had agreed to give health workers s8bn in pay rises, a deal reached after weeks of protests and fraught negotiations with unions. Bergamo, Italy Hospital all-clear: The Italian hospital at the centre of Europe’s first major coronavirus outbreak has no Covid-19 patients in its intensive care unit for the first time since…

The new Swampies As a young man in the 1990s, Dr Larch Maxey joined the Swampy protests against road building, says Patrick Barkham in The Observer. Now, at 47, he is back in a treehouse – with his teenage son Seb. During lockdown, the pair have been living in a camp in the Colne Valley in Buckinghamshire, making a last-ditch attempt to save its forests and lakes from the engineering juggernaut that is HS2. Their fellow protesters range from students to retirees, and for the past few weeks, they have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the black-clad security guards hired to evict them. The guards have dogs, and the pair say they’ve often been assaulted: Larch says he was once “choked out” and lost consciousness. But even when they…

A Cornish pub has come up with a novel way of enforcing social distancing: an electric fence at the bar. Landlord Johnny McFadden said he installed the fence in front of the bar at The Star Inn, St Just, to ensure staff were kept safe from punters. “Before the fence, people were not following social distancing and were doing as they pleased,“ he said – but now, they “take heed to the guidance”. The fence, added McFadden, is for “everybody’s benefit” and isn’t usually live – but he warned: “It can be turned on.” A theme park in Japan has reopened after its Covidenforced shutdown – with one crucial change. Guidelines for Fuji-Q Highland, near Tokyo, suggest that thrill-seekers should “refrain from vocalising loudly”, in order to reduce virus-spreading droplets.…

IRAN Tehran’s hard-line regime is losing its grip Asia Times (Hong Kong) Iran’s hard-line regime has rarely looked so beleaguered, says David Wurmser. Since 26 June, a series of explosions and fires have been reported at a host of sensitive sites in the country, including nuclear facilities, oil refineries and power plants. The most serious, on 2 July, was a blast which hit a building at Natanz, the hub of Iran’s nuclear programme. A group called the Cheetahs of the Homeland – who say they are former security officials planning to overthrow the regime – claimed responsibility, though there are credible suggestions that Israel is behind the explosions. Seven days earlier, another blast struck near the Parchin military complex, which is thought to be the site of nuclear warhead tests.…

If you’re ever tempted to pick up a penguin, be sure to keep away from its backside. The birds defecate by raising their tails, then blasting out jets of watery faeces. In this way, they can relieve themselves without either leaving their nests unguarded, or soiling them. Now a Japanese team has investigated the “projectile trajectory of penguin’s faeces”, and found that it can travel remarkably far. On even ground, the Humboldt penguins shoot their poo to a distance of around 0.4 metres. But when the researchers took the birds’ elevated nests into account, they calculated that at a typical roosting height of two metres, their poo would spray out 1.34 metres – easily far enough to “embarrass keepers”. The team also calculated the “rectal pressure” required for such ejections,…

Liam Payne, formerly of One Direction, has put the Los Angeles mansion that he once shared with Cheryl Cole up for sale for $10.7m. It is deeply luxurious – but haunted. Lights go on in the middle of the night; Payne and Cole once had to flee their bedroom to sleep in the cinema room. One day, the housekeeper and Cole’s mother were accosted by a woman in the street with an explanation: “You’ve got a ghost in your house,” she said. “It’s a man. He wears an army shirt and cargo pants.” She went on to provide a detailed description: “It’s the guy who filmed the Jurassic Park helicopter shots... He’s called Alan.” When Patrick Stewart, who turned 80 this week, swapped the RSC for Star Trek in 1987,…

“It’s Manchester City’s biggest result of the season,” said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph, “perhaps the biggest in their 140-year history.” And it came not on the football pitch, but in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). In February, Uefa had announced it was banning City from European competitions for two seasons – and fining it s30m – owing to their “serious breaches” of the Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations. These require clubs to break even, but City looked to have overstated its income from sponsorship: leaked documents suggested that £59.5m recorded as coming from its principal sponsor, Etihad Airways, had actually been paid directly to the club by its owners. Yet on Monday, it was cleared of that charge and handed a reduced fine of s10m, on…

To The Daily Telegraph You report that of the £15bn spent on personal protective equipment (PPE), most has been spent overseas. This is a disgrace. Private companies are free to base their choices on commercial realities, but the public sector should first seek to source materials from within the UK. Every purchase made overseas risks British jobs, which would be a further drain on the Exchequer. Alastair Montgomery, Wemyss Bay, Renfrewshire To The Daily Telegraph Alastair Montgomery argues that the public sector should buy materials, such as those required for PPE, from within the UK. However, Britain must trade with the rest of the world if it is to prosper: in goods, services, ideas and people. Britain needs the brightest and best from overseas. It needs labourers and seasonal agricultural…

A racy Lady Hamilton A lost portrait of Lord Nelson’s mistress, Emma Hamilton, has been discovered at a seaside antiques shop, said Will Humphries in The Times. Charles Wallrock, an antique dealer based in Lymington, identified the painting as one of four studies of Lady Hamilton painted by the artist Richard Westall in the early years of the 19th century. It had come to his attention when “an elderly lady who had owned it for years”, and had no idea of its significance, brought it into his shop. The painting depicts Hamilton as the Cretan princess Ariadne, in a highly sexualised manner – “gazing over her left shoulder, with her right breast exposed under a loose gown”. According to Wallrock, Hamilton’s risqué pose may have been prompted by her famously…

Babysitting for Xander, Brian is in a pensive mood, thinking about his marriage to Jenny and relationships with Adam and Debbie. Adam is struggling to find reliable cherry-pickers but doesn’t want Brian on his case. In Hungary, Debbie finds out from Roger’s wife Elaine that her father is sick with coronavirus. Debbie feels helpless being so far away from family. She asks Adam to contact Roger, but he’s too busy; Adam’s surprised to hear Debbie so stressed. Alice is fed up of being criticised at work; she wishes her wine delivery would arrive. Adam asks her to help him find pickers, so she rings around instead of doing her work. Chris is amazed when Alice calls to say she’s quit her job; he thought she loved it. Next morning, hungover…

Back in business Having eaten “an awful lot of my own cooking” these past three months, it was “frankly thrilling” to dine out again, said Jay Rayner in The Observer. For my first post-lockdown meal, I went to Trullo, an Italian neighbourhood restaurant in Highbury, north London. Its owners’ recent story “will be familiar to restaurateurs across the country”. The business shut its doors on 18 March, and almost all of Trullo’s staff, and those of its two sister restaurants, both called Padella, went on furlough. Having sunk their cash reserves into the second Padella in Shoreditch (which opened just before lockdown), their future looked precarious. “We were essentially bust,” says Jordan Frieda. But with government-backed loans, they scraped through. Now Trullo has reopened with reduced seating, screens between tables,…

The Daily Telegraph The Honda Jazz is “up there with the most reliable cars ever built” – but it hasn’t always been the most exciting. This hybrid-only fourth version may not break the car out of its “sensible” image, but it is an improvement on the last Jazz in virtually every way. It has smarter tech, a more comfortable interior, and a “clever hybrid drivetrain”, which delivered a genuine 60mpg on Telegraph test drives. Top Gear “The world’s most left-brain small car” is tall like an MPV, making it feel bigger than it is. The underfloor fuel tank has been reshaped, too, so it doesn’t impinge on rear legroom. The dashboard looks “clean and uncluttered”, and there’s “masses” of storage, as well as Honda’s “magic” folding seats. The central screen…

Boohoo: crying foul “Inadequate in scope, timeliness and gravity.” That was how Aberdeen Standard Investment summed up Boohoo’s response to allegations about the exploitation of workers at one of its “sweatshop” suppliers in Leicester, said The Observer. Aberdeen said it had had enough, and last Friday, it dumped 27 million shares, worth about £80m. Boohoo has scrambled to get onto the front foot since the scandal broke last week, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. It no doubt hoped that its appointment of an independent lawyer – Alison Levitt QC – to investigate underpayment, Covid compliance and record-keeping in its supply chain would stem the tide. But “we know from other diminished fashion brands, such as Ted Baker, how quickly it is possible to go from hero to…

Don’t bank on a quick recovery Ambrose Evans-Pritchard The Daily Telegraph US equities have partially recovered since the Covid-19 crash in the spring. Does that mean that financial markets are betting on a V-shaped global recovery? Sadly not, said Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. The equities rebound has been skewed by a clutch of big name US tech stocks “in the grip of a parabolic spike” akin to the end days of the 2000 dotcom bubble. Elsewhere, swathes of the US stock market remain “in distress”. For a truer picture, look at debt markets, which are three times as big as equities. Yields on ten-year Treasuries (US government bonds) are still close to their all-time lows of late March, and futures contracts imply yields will remain “pinned to the floor” in the mid-2030s.…

Mandara Shetty Human Studies Scientist How did you end up in your current role? I was a student at the University of Sheffield and did a year’s industrial placement here in research and development (R&D). It was a great introduction to what it is like to work in industry, and I was delighted to return as a full-time scientist after finishing my degree. What were your priorities when applying for placements? My main priority was to see as many different aspects of a business as possible, including running projects, working in a lab, writing reports and so on. I have always been curious about why people behave the way they do, but when I was studying, everything was theoretical. During my placement this got translated into implemental behavioural science, a…