Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1294 i The Week

What happened The return to school As schools in England prepared to fully reopen next week, Boris Johnson called on all parents to send their children back to the classroom. He said it was “crucial” for pupils to resume formal education after five months of absence. The PM was backed by England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, who said pupils were at more risk of long-term harm from staying at home than from returning to class. In the wake of a similar move in Scotland, Johnson announced that secondary-school pupils in locked-down parts of England would have to wear face masks in all school communal areas. The late announcement on masks marked yet another reversal of education policy following the decision last week to use teacher assessments to determine…

A rise in sales of eye makeup has been put down to the growing use of masks outside the house. Analysts reckon that as the now-mandatory masks cover most of people’s faces, make-up users are putting extra effort into their eyes – and worrying less about their lips. A report by NPD has found that eye make-up is now responsible for 25% of market share, up from 22% before lockdown; and there has been a decline in sales of lipstick. The average household is now signed up to seven subscription services, at a cost of £46 a month, a survey for Barclaycard has found. The most popular subscriptions are for entertainment platforms such as Netflix, followed by food deliveries, and tech and beauty products.…

Military chiefs are reportedly considering whether Britain’s tanks should be scrapped. The cost of upgrading the nation’s fleet of 227 Challenger 2 tanks – and the 388 Warrior armoured vehicles that support them – has soared; and defence officials have long argued that owing to the changing nature of warfare, budgets would be better spent on upgrading cyber-capabilities and other new technologies. However, a decision to scrap the close-combat vehicles could dismay Nato allies.…

The Hague, the Netherlands Mladic appeal: The former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic has launched an appeal against his conviction for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the Bosnian war. After delays caused by his own health problems and the pandemic, Mladic appeared in the UN’s court in The Hague at the start of a two-day hearing on Tuesday. However, his lawyers have argued that with three of the judges attending remotely via a video link, he is unlikely to get a fair trial. They had also sought to get the hearing postponed, arguing that the 78-year-old is not mentally competent to take part. Mladic was sentenced to life in jail in 2017 for his role in the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in…

“How old were you when you realised that hard work and sacrifice weren’t worth it? Some realise it at retirement, when after a lifetime of indispensability and missed weekends to reach the [top job] they are smoothly replaced and forgotten within a month or two. For others the revelation strikes later. ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’ is always on those top regrets of the dying lists. A few precocious individuals work it out in time to fail the ‘marshmallow test’ in infancy. Asked by a stranger with a clipboard if they’d rather have one sweet now or two later, they sensibly surmise that given the inherent randomness of the universe, ‘later’ is just too much of a gamble.” Martha Gill in The Times…

Time to put a lock on the revolving door Simon Jenkins The Guardian In 1961, President Eisenhower warned us that a “military-industrial complex” was distorting US policy. Britain today faces something similar, says Simon Jenkins. In our case it’s a “political-financial complex”: a “revolving door of co-dependency” between Westminster and the City. The latest politician to go through it is former chancellor Sajid Javid, who now joins Tony Blair on the payroll of JPMorgan. And “Whitehall grandees” follow the same path: Lord Burns went to chair Santander, Sir Peter Middleton to Barclays, Lord Macpherson to Hoare. Such a marriage of politics and finance inevitably leads to mutual back scratching. It’s why the Treasury’s first instinct in the current economic crisis was not to channel money to firms and individuals, as…

Three-quarters of Covid patients admitted to hospital are still experiencing symptoms months later, according to a new study. Researchers recruited 163 patients admitted to Southmead Hospital in Bristol. Nineteen died, the rest were invited to a check up 12 weeks later. Of the 110 who attended, 81 were still experiencing a range of symptoms including extreme fatigue, muscle pain and breathlessness. Many were struggling to do basic daily tasks, such as washing and dressing. However, only the minority who had required oxygen therapy in hospital showed evidence of reduction in lung function. “This research helps to describe what many coronavirus patients have been telling us: they are still breathless, tired, and not sleeping well months after admission,” said Dr David Arnold, who is leading Discover, an ongoing “long Covid” research…

Apple’s “best days were meant to be behind it”, said the FT. Four years ago, the activist investor and Apple cheerleader Carl Icahn sold all his shares in the corporation, citing concerns about its position in China. At that point, Apple’s market value was under $600bn. Two years later, it was a trillion dollars; and last week, its market capitalisation hit $2trn. Apple is the first non-state-owned company in the world to reach that milestone – and extraordinarily, the second trillion was added in just five months this year. As economies were locked down during the pandemic, and people became more reliant on technology to stay connected, investors turned to tech stocks. Facebook and Amazon have also been winners in this crisis, but Apple has a special status. Its creations…

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” John Steinbeck, quoted in The Salinas Californian “A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.” Walter Bagehot, quoted in The Times “Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.” Former PM Anthony Eden, quoted in Forbes “Ageing is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.” David Bowie, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit.” Greek proverb, quoted in The Observer “Everybody is vulnerable through love of their children. Hostages to fortune.” Claire Tomalin, quoted in the LA Times “A…

“It promises to be a Tour de France like no other,” said Tom Cary in The Sunday Telegraph. When the 107th iteration of cycling’s biggest race kicks off in Nice on Saturday, “it will do so with bubbles and buffer zones” and mobile testing labs. Cyclists will be tested regularly for Covid-19 – and if, over the course of the tournament, two members of a team test positive, the entire team will be kicked out, “raising the possibility of a yellow jersey contender having to abandon the race” despite not actually testing positive for the virus. That’s assuming the race even reaches Paris: with France’s “creeping” R-rate being monitored, the Tour “may not finish”. If there is a winner, don’t expect him to be British, said Jeremy Whittle in The…

The Hallé Orchestra under conductor Mark Elder is steadily working its way through Debussy’s orchestral music, said Andrew Clements in The Observer. Following on from Nocturnes (2019), this latest release combines the longest of Debussy’s concert scores, the Images for Orchestra, with his famous Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune . Elder is typically “persuasive” – there’s nothing showy or sentimental about his shaping of the Images. And the Hallé’s playing is “beautifully refined”; every colour and texture in Prélude à l’après-midi “perfectly placed”. The orchestral detail in the Images – Debussy’s “extraordinary set of five musical picture postcards” – is “fabulously refined”, agreed Ivan Hewett in The Daily Telegraph. But perhaps more importantly the playing is full of “poetic suggestiveness and subtle shades of feeling” – catching the “sense of…

As the first big fantastical show from HBO and Sky Atlantic since Game of Thrones, Lovecraft Country has a lot to live up to – but it hits the ground running with a “devastatingly effective” blend of “thrills, chills and social commentary”, said Ed Power in The Daily Telegraph. Based on the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, it features tentacled monsters like those in H.P. Lovecraft’s stories written in the early part of the 20th century, but the story unfolds in 1950s America, and features a horror more implacable still – violent racism. Its hero, Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) is an African American from Chicago, who sets out for a “creepy” corner of rural New England to search for his missing father. There, he meets “hick lynchers and savage policemen…

Malicroix by Henri Bosco, 1948 trans. Joyce Zonana (NYRB £13.99). A month into lockdown I read this mid-century masterpiece about a man trapped on a river island in the Camargue. Weather, water and the challenges of solitude are brilliantly evoked; it resonated powerfully at the peak of the pandemic. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, 1972 trans. Thomas Teal (Sort of Books £9.99). One of the best islands and one of the best grandmothers in literature are found in Jansson’s classic novel. It’s told as a series of interweaving short chapters, which together form a sharp-eyed, often surreal meditation on love, nature and childhood – all grounded on the glittering granite of the Gulf of Finland. An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie, 1981 (NYRB £12.99). Kpomassie dreamed as a…

“Bold ambition”: can an SUV save Aston Martin? For about half of its first century, Aston Martin has been producing “outstanding cars”, while “seldom more than skimming the surface of making any money”, said Matt Prior in Autocar. That has meant that every new car it has made has been more important than the last. But the DBX, on which the hopes of the British company now rest, is truly the result of “bold ambition”. Not only is it a brand new car, it’s the maker’s first SUV, first full five-seater, built in a new factory (in St Athan, Wales), on a new platform. Despite all this novelty, Aston Martin has “gone with what it knows best”, said Auto Express. It has applied its “technical wizardry” to create “the finest-handling…

As the world’s central bankers prepared to gather online for their annual Jackson Hole symposium, the IMF reported that coronavirus had lifted debt above WWII levels. Debt in the world’s “advanced economies” rose to 128% of GDP in July; in 1946, it came to 124%. Despite the ugly economics, US stock markets continued their record run: both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are on course for their fifth straight monthly gain in August. Traders were buoyed by signs of progress on US-China trade talks after weeks of wrangling. In Britain, the latest round of Brexit trade talks ended with “little progress” on vexed issues such as fisheries policy and state aid rules. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said that a deal before 31 December (the transition period’s end) now “seems…

● Ant music Hong Kong may be reeling from a political storm, but there’s no escaping the gung-ho mood on the city’s stock exchange, said Hudson Lockett and Thomas Hale in the FT. Profits at HKEX hit a record high in the first half of the year “as the prospect of forced delistings from US bourses encouraged Chinese tech groups to list billions of dollars of shares in the city”. Indeed, HKEX is now the “most valuable stock exchange in the world”. The good news is that the bonanza looks set to continue, said The Economist. This week, Ant Group, the financial services arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, filed for a joint IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The company, controlled by Jack Ma, is reportedly planning to sell…

Guo Wengui Steve Bannon’s arrest on fraud charges has shone an intriguing light on his life since President Trump cast the “former Svengali” aside in 2018, said Josh Glancy in The Times: it seems he’s been travelling the world calling for populist revolutions, on a “quest for relevance and funding”. His latest backer is Guo Wengui – an “exiled Chinese billionaire” who reportedly shares his “loathing of the Communist regime in Beijing”. Bannon might have looked “as though he had just come off a long Grateful Dead tour” when arraigned in New York last week. But he was actually “summering” on Guo’s 151ft yacht the Lady May, off the coast of Connecticut, when law enforcement swooped. Guo is an intriguing figure, said Forbes. He is said to have started out…

Beachgoers at Durdle Door in Dorset last week saved a swimmer who had got into difficulty in choppy waters, by forming a human chain and pulling him to safety. Witnesses described noticing that the man was being dragged out to sea, before realising that he was waving to show that he was unable to get back to the shore. More than 20 people then held hands in a line to reach him. “Ultimately the public helped save that chap’s life,” said coastguard Matt Leat. The tiny Somali elephant shrew, which had been lost to science for decades, has been rediscovered in Djibouti. New footage of the animal, which is about the size of a mouse but can run at speeds of nearly 20mph, was captured by researchers last year. There…

The BBC, which faced a backlash for deciding that only orchestral versions of the patriotic anthems Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia, would be played at this year’s virtual Last Night of the Proms. The BBC insisted the decision had been a purely artistic one, prompted by the fact that there will be fewer musicians this year, and no live audience in the Royal Albert Hall to sing along. It said the songs would be restored in full next year. But conservatives accused it of bowing to “woke” sentiment. John Lewis, with news that it is planning to drop its price promise – Never Knowingly Undersold – after nearly 100 years. CEO Sharon White said she was reviewing the pledge (which only applies to in-store purchases) in order…

Asked to describe how they felt about going back to the office or other place of work, 73% of UK adults surveyed expressed at least some negative sentiments. The figure was similar among workers in the US, but in France only 59% expressed negative sentiments, while in Germany, 54% did so. ManpowerGroup/The Daily Telegraph Support for the Tory party has dropped four points to 40% since the Government announced its U-turn on England’s A-level results. Meanwhile, support for Labour has risen three points, to 38%. Keir Starmer also leads Boris Johnson by 35% to 31% on the question of who would make the better PM. The poll gives the Tories their lowest lead since June 2019. YouGov/The Times…

New York Bannon arrested: Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former adviser and a leading architect of the 2016 election victory, has been arrested for fraud and, if found guilty, could face more than 20 years in jail. Along with three others, he has been charged with syphoning off for personal use more than $1m of the $25m that donors had given to “We Build The Wall” – their fundraising campaign to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. Bannon’s arrest was a media event: he was picked up by agents of the US Postal Inspection Service from the deck of a 150ft “super-yacht” owned by a Chinese billionaire. The right-wing strategist, who denies the charge, is the sixth senior aide to the president to face criminal charges, after Paul Manafort, Roger…

An Indian woman is seeking a divorce from her husband – because their 18-month marriage has been too harmonious. The unnamed woman asked a court in Uttar Pradesh for a divorce because she felt stifled by her husband’s mild temper. “Whenever I make a mistake, he always forgives me,” she said. “I wanted to argue with him.” Her plea was rejected. A German university is offering “idleness grants” worth s1,600 to applicants who promise to do nothing. Applications consist of simple questions such as: What do you not want to do? For how long? Why is it important not to do it? Answers will be used in an exhibition called The School of Inconsequentiality: Towards a Better Life, and successful applicants must submit a “report” on their time spent doing…

Take honey for a sore throat Honey is a more effective treatment for coughs and sore throats than many over-the-counter syrups and painkillers, according to a new Oxford University study. Indeed, the researchers found that the traditional remedy was so good at relieving symptoms, they have suggested it could be prescribed by doctors, as an alternative to antibiotics. Antibiotics rarely have an impact on upper respiratory tract infections as the vast majority are caused by viruses – but are often prescribed all the same, in response to patient demand. “Honey is a frequently used lay remedy that is well known to patients,” they said, in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine. “It is also cheap, easy to access and has limited harms.” The researchers reviewed the results of 14 studies that…

Boris Johnson’s holiday in Scotland with fiancée Carrie Symonds and baby Wilfred was supposed to be a low-key affair. He’d implied he was going camping. In fact, they stayed in a cottage at Applecross, in the Highlands, with a bell tent in an adjoining field. It’s not clear who the tent was for: there was speculation they had a guest to stay, or that the PM’s security guards slept in it. Either way, its presence annoyed the farmer who owned the field. “Usually if people want to go inside a fenced area, they ask for permission first, but I was not asked at all,” he told the Daily Mail. “It is only polite to ask.” Kellyanne Conway has quit as Donald Trump’s senior aide – after one family feud too…

“Something has happened this year without precedent in our political history,” said Kevin Pringle in The Sunday Times. For the first time, a series of polls has shown a sustained majority for Scottish independence. One of the latest polls last week showed a 55-45 split in favour of separation, an all-time high for the “yes” vote and a reversal of the 2014 referendum result. Around two-thirds of people in Scotland under 55 would now vote for independence, including 72% of 16- to 34-year-olds. If a majority of pro-independence MSPs are elected next May, which looks like a racing certainty, the Tories will come under immense pressure to grant a new referendum. No wonder Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove is said to be in “save the Union” talks with pro-UK figures…

It was billed as an “all-action, high-scoring thriller”, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) had scored in their previous 34 Champions League games; Bayern Munich had already scored 42 in the competition this season, putting eight past Barcelona in the quarter-finals. But like so many big games, Sunday’s final was merely a “decent” match: Bayern won 1-0, thanks to a goal from Kingsley Coman, a PSG reject. Victory gave them their sixth Champions League triumph, and delivered a “clean sweep of titles” for the season. Bundesliga, German Cup – “everything they entered, they won”. This performance may have been “accomplished” rather than overwhelming, but there can be no doubt that Bayern are “the best team in Europe”. They didn’t look like it at the start of…

An unlevel playing field To The Guardian Although I think the A-level grading system this year was unfair, I don’t agree with just awarding teacher-assessed grades, which inflates pass rates. I am studying for my A levels and am halfway through. Next year I have to sit exams having missed a substantial amount of teaching this year, so I expect to do less well than I had hoped. As many students are deferring university places, next year I will be fighting for a place against some students who have inflated results. How is this fair? Why didn’t exam boards ask for copies of mock exams and samples of students’ work and mark these? Mary Poll, Wymondham, Norfolk A question for teachers To The Sunday Times For all the condemnation of…

Real Life by Brandon Taylor Daunt Books 336pp £9.99 The Week Bookshop £7.99 This “incisively satirical”, Booker-longlisted novel follows the tribulations of a gay, black biochemist at a university in America’s Midwest, said Anthony Cummins in The Observer. There’s an “ever-present crackle of jeopardy” in Wallace’s interactions with his mainly white colleagues, both in the laboratory – where he is demeaned by a racist supervisor – and at social events, where his supposed friends treat him as “a mirror in which to assess their own lives”. The injustices he faces are at the centre of the story, but Taylor also provides “plenty of low-key comedy” at the expense of middle-class mores. It’s a stunning debut, agreed Jeremy O. Harris in The New York Times. The dialogue is awkward in places,…

From All Quiet on the Western Front to Apocalypse Now and beyond, some war films form part of a well-established canon. Here are a few slightly less well-known examples that are currently available to stream: The Battle of Algiers Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 account of the Algerian struggle for independence is perhaps the best film ever made about guerilla warfare. Banned in France for some years, it presents such a lucid analysis of the tactics on both sides that it is said to have been studied at the Pentagon during the Iraq War. The Grave of the Fireflies A 1988 Studio Ghibli animation that tells the story of a teenager and his little sister struggling to survive in Japan during the Second World War. It is visually arresting, slow-paced, and punctuated…

By any standard, Grayson Perry’s career has been a “phenomenal success”, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. The self-styled “transvestite potter”, known for sometimes adopting the “flamboyant persona” of his female alter ego Claire, is a Turner Prize winner and elected member of the Royal Academy whose work has been exhibited in some of the world’s most prestigious museums. He has also written “bestselling books”, presented award-winning TV shows, and been appointed CBE. Yet Perry’s elevation to “national treasure” was hard won: for much of the 1980s and 1990s, he toiled in obscurity, making a pittance. This exhibition is the first survey of the work he produced in that period, one unknown to all but his most devoted fans. Charting his progress from 1982, when he graduated from art school,…

What the experts recommend Covid-safe food festivals It came as a blow to many foodies when the Abergavenny Food Festival – scheduled for next month – was cancelled, joining a long list of calendar highlights destined not to take place this summer. But lovers of “uplifting” communal events should not despair, as some scheduled for autumn are going ahead, albeit in modified forms, said Madeleine Howell in The Daily Telegraph. The Manchester Food and Drink Festival will run from 24 September to 5 October. Capacity will be limited, but there will be live music, 40 food traders offering table service only, and a beer bar (whose wares you will be invited to browse and order on an app). In the grounds of Hampton Court Palace this weekend (29-31 August) there…

Wimbledon champion who fought discrimination in tennis Angela Buxton 1934-2020 Angela Buxton, who has died aged 85, was a British tennis champion best known for her extraordinary partnership with Althea Gibson, the first black American to win a grand slam title. As a Jewish woman, Buxton had experienced discrimination time and again, and so when they met on a tour of India in 1955, she was instinctively drawn to Gibson – the Harlem-raised daughter of South Carolina sharecroppers who was battling such overt racism, she’d almost given up the game. (As Billie Jean King said of US tennis in that period, “Everything was white. The balls, the clothes, the socks, the shoes, the people. Everything.”) The two outsiders first became friends, then tennis partners – and together, Buxton recalled, they…

“Even in a dry August, some corporate stories force their way through the parched earth,” said Lex in the Financial Times. One of the most persistent “weeds” is the rumoured takeover of BT. Reports suggesting that private equity groups had “run the slide rule over the telecom group’s assets” saw shares jump 5% on Monday. You can’t blame the buyout barons for having a crack. BT is so cheap (shares recently touched 11-year lows) that grabbing the whole company would be a clever wheeze to gain control of its most valuable asset – the Openreach infrastructure arm. What a shame, as analysts at Jefferies note, that BT has just “begun to act as a dependable national champion” – recently promising to roll out full-fibre internet to more far-flung parts of…

In a quarter in which even Shell cut its “once-sacrosanct payout”, no one was expecting much good news in the latest “Global Dividend Index” compiled by fund manager Janus Henderson, said Jeremy Gordon on Citywire. Even so, what it reported was dramatic. The group found that headline global dividends fell by 22% in the second quarter – “easily the worst quarterly drop since the global financial crisis” of 2009. In cash terms, that represents a $108.1bn fall, year-on-year, to $382.2bn. When assessing the “full toll the pandemic will take on share income in 2020”, the fund house expects headline payouts to decline 17% from last year to $1.2trn, in a “best-case scenario”. The worst-case outcome – where all companies deemed at risk cut payouts – would cause a 23% drop…

Controversy of the week Is the PM up to the job? “A circus run by clowns.” “The most inept government in living memory.” And those are the judgements of some of Boris Johnson’s own MPs, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. Just 13 months after the Prime Minister took office, verdicts on his administration have “set new levels of obloquy”, mainly directed at its handling of the Covid crisis which has been an “omnishambles”. The discontent goes far beyond his own backbenches, said the Daily Mail; and far beyond Covid. The exams fiasco (see page 22) is but the latest of a series of U-turns – most recently a last-minute decision to extend the ban on landlords evicting tenants – which give the impression of a government “rudderless and…

Ministers caved to pressure last week, and extended a ban on landlord evictions in England and Wales by four weeks. Introduced in March, the ban will now remain in place until 20 September. Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick also announced an extension to the minimum notice period a landlord can give a tenant, from three to six months. Almost 230,000 private renters have fallen into arrears since the start of the pandemic, and charities and the Labour Party had urged the Government to think again. In Northern Ireland, an eviction ban has been extended to March 2021 and Scotland is expected to follow suit.…

Edinburgh Masks at school: Children at secondary schools in Scotland will from next week be obliged to wear face masks in corridors and other communal areas where social distancing measures are hard to enforce. Nicola Sturgeon’s government introduced the rule for children over 12 after 17 teachers and two pupils were confirmed to have tested positive for Covid-19 at a special school in Dundee, and a teacher and two children tested positive at a primary school in Lanarkshire. The outbreaks were the latest in a series linked to Scottish schools since they reopened for the new term in mid-August. Education Secretary John Swinney said the measure had been introduced in light of recent WHO guidance that over-12s wear masks. After weeks of falls, Scotland’s Covid-19 infection rate is climbing again:…

Richard Osman on Twitter For over a decade, Richard Osman has been the genial brainbox on the BBC quiz show Pointless. Now, he has written a “cosy crime novel” in which Britain is portrayed as a multicultural paradise, says Jonathan Dean in The Sunday Times. Polish builders play chess with English gentlemen; black female police officers keep mixed-race couples safe in the Home Counties. Surely this vision is not just rose-tinted, but fantasy? “I don’t think it is,” says Osman, cautiously. “We just have a dim view of the world at the moment because of social media. We all like to think we’re media-literate. ‘Oh, I understand Twitter. It’s a bubble.’ But we don’t. We can’t even begin to. We see the world as combative, because the public-facing bit is…

The origins of blackface in the US were in the minstrel shows of the mid-19th century. In these shows, white performers would darken their skin with shoe polish, grease paint or burnt cork, and exaggerate their features to look stereotypically “black”. The performances were steeped in racism – depicting black people as lazy, ignorant and cowardly – but this did nothing to diminish their popularity: long after the American Civil War, they went on drawing audiences. In 1927, the white actor Al Jolson performed in black-face in the hit film The Jazz Singer. Numerous stars, including Shirley Temple, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney all wore blackface for films in the first half of the 20th century too. But in the 1940s and ‘50s things began to change, with campaigners writing…

Even the earliest humans made an effort to get a good night’s sleep, by building themselves comfy beds with insect-repellent properties. Archaeologists excavating the Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, have unearthed the fossilised remains of 200,000-year-old beds made from grass, and sitting on layers of ash. Until now, the oldest known grass beds were 77,000 years old. The grass would have been soft; but the team believe the ash was used to deter pests, which struggle to crawl through fine particles. On the grass were traces of camphor bush – which is still used to repel insects in rural areas in East Africa. Some of the ash appears to have been the remains of earlier bedding that the cave-dwellers had burned (there was evidence of fires nearby, and…

Starting the new academic year was never going to be easy, said Chris Stokel-Walker on Wired. But just as universities in England thought they were getting to grips with the complexities of “social distancing, sanitising and digital teaching”, along came a double-whammy. First up was A-level results day, on 13 August, when thousands of students woke up to find that they’d missed the entry requirements for their preferred undergraduate course, because Ofqual’s algorithm had lowered nearly 40% of teacher-assessed grades. Then, four days later, came Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s “screeching U-turn”. Following Scotland’s example, he said students would be able to keep their higher, teacher-assessed grades. He also removed a cap on student numbers at English universities, so a larger cohort could be accommodated this year. The volte-face will have…

In this time of tumultuous change, you can always rely on one constant, said Tom Peck in The Independent: the lack of any progress in Brexit talks. After yet another round of negotiations stalled last week, neither side even bothered to put an optimistic spin on events. Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, said that the talks had at times felt like they were “going backwards more than forwards”, adding that he now thought a deal “unlikely”. His British counterpart, David Frost, accused the EU side of holding things up by insisting the UK accept its positions on state aid and fisheries before it would discuss anything else. The prospects of a deal that can be ratified by the end of the year look slim at this point, said Reaction.life.…

In the three years since Joe Root became captain, the England cricket team have “often been highly entertaining”, said Vic Marks in The Observer. There have been “stunning victories” and “crazy collapses”. But in the first innings of the Third Test against Pakistan, we saw a new, “ruthless” side to this team. They ground the visitors down, amassing “a mammoth total” of 583 runs before they declared (owing to bad weather, the match ended in a draw). Almost half of those runs were scored by Zak Crawley: in only his eighth Test, the 22-year-old Kent batsman hit a “monumental” 267. It was the highest score by an England player since 2011, and the tenth highest in English Test cricket. “It would be hard to overstate the quality of this innings,”…

To The Independent John Rentoul’s article is too kind to the politicians and Gavin Williamson in particular. He acquits him of failing to look further into Ofqual, saying that taking the enquiry to the next stage requires “a sixth sense for trouble and a vivid imagination”. Not so. Williamson simply accepted assurances that the system would work. He displayed an incuriosity about the basis for those assurances which beggars belief. A few simple questions about the system would have revealed those assurances to be worthless. Williamson doesn’t appear to have asked how the mechanism worked. If he had, he would have known that it required students to be failed when they were predicted to pass because of their school’s past record. No one comes out of this looking anything other…

Damien Hirst’s longing for a banana Italian art world prankster Maurizio Cattelan “caused a sensation” last December when he used duct tape to affix a banana to the wall of a booth at Art Basel Miami, says Stephanie Eckardt in W magazine. Priced at between $120,000 and $150,000, and created in an edition of three, the “work”, titled Comedian, was snapped up by collectors. Now, it turns out that one of those who missed out was none other than Damien Hirst. On Instagram last week, Hirst admitted that seven months later, he was still so “desperate” to acquire a copy of Comedian, that he had asked his friend, the curator Francesco Bonami, to offer Cattelan any work of his own in exchange. “After everything we’ve seen in art it’s still…

Natasha bumps into Fallon, who is about to meet Helen to discuss the rent for the Tearoom. Natasha doesn’t think Fallon will have any luck persuading Helen to extend the rent reduction. She’s proved right, Helen won’t budge on the rent. Fallon realises that she’ll have to sack Emma and wonders if their friendship will survive that. Before Fallon speaks to Emma, Emma hears from Natasha that her job is on the line. Emma feels furious with Fallon for going behind her back after all the work she’s put into the Tearoom. Lynda prepares a special dinner for her and Robert in the hope of reigniting their love life. Over dinner she feels shy and self-conscious. Robert puts her quietness down to tiredness, and so when Lynda suggests an early…

Bhajis are surprisingly easy to make, says Katy Beskow – and combining red and white onions gives them an appealing striped effect. Swirl a spoonful of coconut yoghurt through mango chutney to make the perfect dip for this Indian classic Candy-stripe onion bhajis 500ml sunflower oil 5 tbsp plain flour 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp garam masala ½ tsp chilli powder 1 tsp sea salt, crushed 1 red onion, thinly sliced 1 onion, thinly sliced chopped coriander • Begin to heat the oil in a large, heavy-based pan over a medium-high heat. • Mix together the dry ingredients. Throw in the onion slices, then coat the slices well. Stir in 3 tbsp of cold water to form a thick mixture. • Test the oil by dripping a small amount…

Tesco: food fight “Never underestimate the optimism of the British shopper,” said The Observer. Official figures show that retail sales in July – the first full month in which shops were open postlockdown – “rose above pre-pandemic levels”. Hurrah! The “rapid change in customer behaviour” is creating massive ripples, however, said James Cook in The Daily Telegraph. This week, Tesco announced plans to hire 16,000 workers to help cope with booming growth in its online orders, which have doubled under lockdown to around £5.5bn this year. This “aggressive expansion” could allow it to steal a march on digital-only rivals, such as Ocado, which recently boasted it was the UK’s fastest-growing grocer, as a new digital battleground opens. The top brass at M&S must be thanking their lucky stars they…

Once risky, tech is now a “safe bet” Katie Martin Financial Times The most remarkable feature of the stock market rally that has taken the US S&P 500 to new record highs is its “grotesquely lopsided nature”, says Katie Martin. The huge gains of a handful of tech giants disguise the fact that “many US stocks are in a deep slump”: energy is down by a third since late February, financials are down by a fifth, and utilities and real estate haven’t made much progress since the fire sale in risky assets in March. Now, inevitably, there are questions about how much longer Amazon, Apple et al can continue driving growth while the rest of the index lags behind. The important point is that, unlike during the dotcom craze of…