Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1101 i The Week

What happened The Trump team Donald Trump began filling senior posts last week in preparation for taking office on 20 January. The president-elect offered an olive branch to the Washington establishment by appointing Reince Priebus, an insider close to the Republican leadership, as his chief of staff. More controversially, he picked Steve Bannon, the former head of the hard-right Breitbart News, as his chief White House adviser (see page 21). Critics were also perturbed by his choice of Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo to serve, respectively, as national security adviser, attorney general and CIA director. All three are loyalists known for their hard-line views. Trump has continued to use Twitter to attack media critics, and, in a breach of diplomatic convention, recommended this week that Nigel Farage be…

New York Trump’s feuds: The US Vice-President-elect Mike Pence was attending the Broadway show Hamilton last Friday when he was booed by fellow audience members and then lectured from the stage at the curtain call. The musical, about the US founding father Alexander Hamilton, features hip-hop music and a racially diverse cast. “Mike Pence, we welcome you here,” actor Brandon Dixon (who plays the 18th century vice-president Aaron Burr) told him. “We are the diverse Americans who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents… or uphold our inalienable rights.” The incident (pictured) provoked furious tweets from President-elect Donald Trump. “The Theatre must always be a safe and special place,” said one. “The cast of Hamilton was very rude last…

We’re not as transient as we think we are Claude S. Fischer Aeon “Doesn’t anyone stay in one place any more?” So sang Carole King back in 1971, and that lament still resonates with people troubled by the ever-more transient nature of American life. But here’s the weird thing, says Claude S. Fischer: US society is not becoming more transient. When King sang those words, “Americans had been moving around less and less for generations”, and that trend has only accelerated. Census surveys show that in the 1950s – a time people look back on as an era of stable communities – about 20% of Americans moved house from one year to the next. That figure has steadily dropped, and is now just 11%. The proportion of people migrating across…

Cryonics: robbing death of its dignity? Fifty years ago the idea of resurrecting frozen humans after death was pure science fiction, said The Times. But that was before a US physics teacher, Robert Ettinger, launched the “immortalist” movement – cryonics – in 1964. The theory behind it is simple: pack the body in ice immediately after death; replace the water in the body’s cells with a type of human antifreeze; then store it head down in a tank full of liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196°C. Eventually, when the cure for whatever caused the death has been found, the person can be defrosted and bought back to life. Since Ettinger formulated his theory, some 2,000 people (including Ettinger, his mother and his two wives) have paid to be stored,…

Tennis: Murray’s greatest year “Andy Murray already wore the crown of the best tennis player in the world,” said Matt Dickinson in The Times. And in London on Sunday, two weeks after he finally reached the top of the world rankings, he played like the king. The Scot capped an extraordinary year – perhaps “the greatest ever by a British sportsman” – by beating Novak Djokovic in straight sets to win the ATP World Tour Finals. Since losing a Davis Cup tie in September, Murray has “won and won and won”: if that run had “lacked anything”, it was a win over Djokovic, whom he’d beaten only twice in 15 prior contests. Yet this week he overcame fatigue to dismiss his nemesis “majestically” and claim his 24th victory in a…

To The Daily Telegraph Charles Moore suggests that judges who oppose Brexit, or whose family members oppose Brexit, are too biased to rule on the Article 50 case. Yet the High Court judgment in no way turns on the question of whether Brexit is a good or bad idea. Its focus is entirely on whether the Government can act by executive fiat to overturn individual rights created through an Act of Parliament, in this case the 1972 European Communities Act. All sides agree that this point of constitutional law is eminently justiciable. Based on centuries of historical precedent, the judges ruled that to remove such rights requires a fresh Act of Parliament. John Peet, London To The Daily Telegraph There is widespread alarm in the legal profession, as well as…

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them J.K. Rowling’s new story set in the world of Harry Potter Dir: David Yates 2hrs 13mins (12A) They were never going to leave it there, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. The eight Harry Potter films earned almost $8bn at the global box office, so no surprise that “the Hollywood machine” found a way to renew that “money-making potential”. What is unexpected, however, is that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the first in a planned series of five spin-off movies set in the same fictional universe as the Potter stories, turns out to be an absolute blast. “From the opening reprise of the instantly recognisable Harry Potter theme tune to an emotional finale that had me – to my…

New cars: what the critics say The Daily Telegraph Since its launch eight years ago, the Q5 has been an “unqualified success”. Audi has shifted 1.6 million of the SUVs – and sales have remained on a steady upward trajectory. So it’s hardly surprising the carmaker has given the Q5 a conservative update: it’s reluctant to “mess with its clearly winning formula”. Now slightly bigger, with new suspension and engines, the car looks “little different”. Top Gear Still, “if you park the old model next to the new, the changes are obvious and for the better”. There’s a big single-frame grille at the front, and a “much more sculpted” side profile – “all good stuff”. And, as in most Audis, the classy interior is a very pleasant place to be.…

Lloyds: trouble on the cards? In its pre-crisis pomp, Lloyds was a bank that loved to do deals. It looks like it’s back in business, said Harry Yorke in The Daily Telegraph. Lloyds has emerged as “the front runner” to secure MBNA, Bank of America’s £7bn credit card business in the UK. You can’t blame António Horta-Osório “for wanting to seal his turnaround” of the bank “with a monster takeover”, said Jim Armitage in the London Evening Standard. “After years of ditching assets and closing operations, what alpha male boss wouldn’t want to finish the job with some chest-thumping M&A?” But, as City analysts point out, it’s questionable whether splurging £7bn of Lloyds’s “cherished capital” on MBNA is “altogether wise” just as new regulatory burdens are requiring banks to set…

Steve Eisman The Wall Street outsider, who shot to fame as the subject of the Oscar-winning movie The Big Short, saw the last crash coming and profited hugely from it, says Patrick Collinson in The Guardian. So what does Steven Eisman think is the next Big Short? No question, he says, “Europe is screwed. You guys are still screwed.” And most screwed of all are continental European banks – especially Italy’s. The problem, he says, is that they are stuffed with “nonperforming loans” (NPLs), where the borrower has fallen behind with repayments. Eisman reckons many of these are worth just 20% of their original price. Yet if the banks recognised their true value, it would wipe out their capital and they’d go bust overnight. In The Big Short, Eisman’s team…

Controversy of the week Jam tomorrow Ever since she moved into No. 10, Theresa May has had a simple pitch, said The Guardian: “I am not a born-to-rule, out-of-touch Conservative.” This week, she had an opportunity to prove it. Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Autumn Statement this week was supposed to be the moment that her Government showed solidarity with the “Jams”: the group previously known as “hard-working families” or “the squeezed middle”, but now, in May’s terminology, as families who are “just about managing”. In the event, there were some sops for the working poor: a slight rise in the minimum wage; more cash for families claiming universal credit; a cancelled fuel duty rise. But these will do almost nothing to soften George Osborne’s welfare cuts. There were no gimmicks –…

The man who saves history In 2012, Professor Maamoun Abdulkarim was made head of antiquities at Syria’s National Museum. He wasn’t exactly thrilled by the promotion. “I had no idea how I could protect hundreds of thousands of objects from war and terrorists,” he told Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times. “If I wasn’t an optimist I would have lost my mind.” In the four years since then, Abdulkarim and his team of archaeologists have rescued more than 400,000 ancient artefacts from cities across Syria. They have worked night and day, smuggling the objects out of besieged areas, photographing and packing them, and hiding them in underground chambers throughout Damascus. He is aware that this may seem a strange priority to some. “I know that people’s lives are more important…

Why it’s so hard to shed the fat Jenni Russell The Times Diets rarely work – not in the long term, says Jenni Russell. And there’s a scientific reason for this. “Our bodies like equilibrium and they establish set points to which they want to return.” Put a few extra pounds on over Christmas and it’s relatively easy to lose them; remain overweight for a long time – “no one is quite sure how long; perhaps a year” – and you effectively reset your default weight at this higher level. When you then try to shed that fat, your body fights to retain the extra reserves by increasing the level of your hunger hormones and slowing down your metabolism. So a newly thin person will always have to eat less,…

What your phone says about you The outside of your phone can reveal almost as much about you as the data stored inside it. Using swabs taken from handsets, researchers from the University of California have been able to construct surprisingly accurate profiles of their owners: among other things, they can determine their gender, what foods they eat, what hygiene products they use and which medications they take. People leave chemical and molecular traces whenever they touch an object; and on objects they touch frequently – phones, keys, wallets – these build up over time. Using mass spectronomy, the researchers analysed the phones of 39 volunteers, and constructed a personalised lifestyle “readout” for each of them. Some of the products detected – including sunscreen and mosquito repellent – had been…

Theresa May’s chief whip, Gavin Williamson, has an unusual method of intimidating MPs: he keeps a pet tarantula on his desk. The one-year-old arachnid is named Cronus, after the Greek god who castrated his father, and ate his own children to ensure they wouldn’t usurp him. “I’ve had Cronus since he was a spiderling, so I have a very paternal sort of approach,” Williamson told The Sunday Telegraph. “It’s very much the same sort of love and care that I give to my spider as I give to all MPs.” The late Lord Longford (above) delighted in telling stories against himself, says Bruce Anderson in The Daily Telegraph. The eccentric peer once recalled a visit he had made to Germany as a junior minister just after the War. The plane…

Matt Fitzpatrick doesn’t look a day over 16, said Derek Lawrenson in the Daily Mail. He still lives with his mum and dad in Sheffield; he doesn’t drive a flash car. But despite his “boy-next-door” appearance, there’s nothing ordinary about the way this 22-year-old plays golf. On Sunday, he showed off his “nerves of Sheffield steel” in Dubai to become the youngest ever winner of the DP World Tour Championship, earning almost £1.3m in the process. It was the third European Tour title of his brief career, making him the youngest English golfer to achieve the feat – a record previously held by Nick Faldo. On its final day, the competition came down to a “compelling duel” between Fitzpatrick and his fellow Englishman, 25-year-old Tyrrell Hatton. They “put daylight between…

Exhibition of the week Portrait of the Artist The Queen’s Gallery, London SW1 (0303-123 7301, www.royalcollection.org.uk ). Until 17 April The new exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace “takes us on a delightful trawl through the vaults of the Royal Art Collection, digging out oddities and rarities that illuminate the changing role of the artist”, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. It is a “rich” and “absorbing” show that moves from the 15th century to the present day, “democratically” mixing “excellent” self-portraits by the likes of Rembrandt, Rubens, Dürer and David Hockney with paintings, prints, sculptures and drawings of artists captured by friends and relatives. Yet, despite the wealth of famous names on display, the “real stars” of the show are often the smaller…

What the experts recommend Rofuto 160 Broad Street, Birmingham (0121-369 8888) “Rofuto is a Japanese restaurant that should really be in Japan,” says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Located way up on the 16th floor of a city centre business hotel, were it in Tokyo, its clientele would enjoy a “view of dazzling multicoloured skyscrapers, lit up like Christmas”. But Rofuto is in Birmingham, and so the diner gazes instead “at the A456, an enormous roundabout and a scattering of stumpy tower blocks”. As it happens, I quite liked this view, but give Rofuto a try even if you don’t share my taste for “downtown decrepitude”. The restaurant itself is “spotless” and “glimmering” – and the food’s great. Tempura tiger prawns were so delicious and crunchy, “I could…

It’s the end of an era at Goldman Sachs, said The Wall Street Journal. Michael “Woody” Sherwood, a 30-year Goldman veteran who “played a key role” in pushing the investment bank’s growth in Europe and emerging markets, is to quit. He’ll be entrusting the reins of Goldman Sachs International (GSI) – which he built up from a “tiny, loss-making entity” to a business contributing more than a quarter of Goldman’s total income – to his current co-chief, Richard Gnodde. The move comes little more than five months after Sherwood was grilled by MPs over Goldman’s involvement in the BHS scandal. Sherwood’s departure “will be greeted with mixed emotions”, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. A Briton who once described himself as “the most senior non-American in the firm”, he…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys Johnson Matthey The Times This specialist chemicals firm majors on emission-control technologies for cars, and is a “clear beneficiary” of the low pound. Profiting from an “upward trend”, and new business activities should break even soon. Buy. £32.27. LVMH Investors Chronicle The Paris-listed luxury conglomerate owns strong brands across fashion, perfumes, cosmetics, leather goods, watches and wine. Good growth prospects have been matched by impressive Q3 results. Buy. s162. Manx Telecom The Daily Telegraph Manx provides fixed-line, broadband and mobile telecoms on the Isle of Man, and is highly cash-generative, with declining debts. Its global roaming solutions arm should boost revenues. Yields 5.3%. Buy. 207p. Prudential The Times The insurer’s latest results show a 16% jump in sales of premiums; new business profits…

Hamburg, Germany Streets renamed: Germany’s second-largest city is to rename ten of its streets in honour of notable German women, such as the comic actress and writer Helga Feddersen and the 17th century Jewish diarist and businesswoman Glückel von Hameln. The port city is well known for its St Pauli red-light district, home to the Reeperbahn; and now a street in the neighbouring Altona district is to be named after dominatrix Domenica Niehoff (pictured), who died in 2009. A former prostitute, she became famous in the 1980s as a campaigner for the rights of sex workers. She also worked to help women struggling with drug addiction. Paris Jewel heists: Two Qatari women in their 60s have become the latest victims in a series of armed robberies of rich visitors to…

1 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue by Bob Dylan, performed by Joan Baez 2 Ani Ohev by Yehonatan Geffen and Yitzhak Klepter, performed by Yehonatan Geffen, Yoni Rechter, Gidi Gov, Yehudit Ravitz and David Broza 3 Paisley Park by Prince, performed by Prince and The Revolution 4 This is the Sea by Mike Scott, performed by The Waterboys 5 Merov Ahavati, written and performed by Arkadi Duchin 6* Here Comes the Sun by George Harrison, performed by Nina Simone 7 What Difference Does it Make? by Morrissey and Johnny Marr, performed by The Smiths 8 Fake Empire by Matthew Berninger and Bryce Dessner, performed by The National Book: A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth Luxury: a lemon tree * Choice…

A robot called Little Fatty “went berserk” and attacked his own display case at an exhibition in China last week. The cute-looking droid is designed to play with young children, responding with appropriate facial expressions. But after answering questions put to it at the China Hi-Tech Fair in Shenzhen, Little Fatty went rogue. It rammed its display booth, sending shards of glass flying, and then drove into a visitor, injuring his leg. Staff eventually brought the robot under control; witnesses say it was sporting its “sad face” as it was removed from the premises. It has since emerged that the problem was human error, not a robot uprising: Little Fatty’s controller had accidentally pressed the “forward” button instead of “reverse”. An American man is refusing to find out who won…

GERMANY Trump’s win is a boon for Deutsche Bank Die Welt (Berlin) Much has been made in the US of President-elect Donald Trump’s rumoured ties to Russia, says Jan Dams. But what about his ties to Germany? Our biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, is invested in Trump up to its ears and has every reason to cheer his election. Many banks refused to lend to the real estate tycoon, because of his multiple business failures and bankruptcies, but Deutsche Bank stayed loyal: since 1998 it has lent him some $2.5bn, fully $364m of which has gone into Miami’s Doral Golf Club and Trump hotels in Chicago and Washington. All those loans are due by 2024: but here’s “the twist”. They can be renegotiated. And that’s where a Trump-led Justice Department comes…

Leprosy was eradicated in humans in Britain centuries ago – but it turns out it is still rife in the country’s red squirrel population. Having encountered a few seemingly isolated cases, scientists at Edinburgh University tested 110 dead red squirrels from around the British Isles. To their surprise, almost a third were carrying the leprosy bacteria, although many had no clinical signs of the disease. The team identified two strains: one, found in squirrels from Brownsea Island in Dorset, was the type responsible for outbreaks of the disease in medieval Europe; the other, found in squirrels from Scotland, England and Ireland, is a recently discovered strain that affects humans in Mexico. This is the first time leprosy has been found in squirrels – until now, it had been detected only…

“The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right… the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women.” Judge Learned Hand, quoted in The Guardian “The marvellous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing.” Ronnie Barker, quoted in The Times “Reality is now a kind of huge advertising campaign, selling television’s image of what life is about.” J.G. Ballard, quoted in The Observer “You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.” Norman Douglas, quoted on Forbes.com “Forever poised between a cliché and an indiscretion.” Harold Macmillan on the foreign secretary’s lot, quoted in The Times “Politeness is an avowedly false coin, with which…

Look and learn To The Guardian Gaby Hinsliff mistakes a symptom for the cause of poor white boys failing in school. As a teacher, I recognise that “mucking around” is a way boys save face when humiliated – sometimes continually, throughout childhood – by failing at a curriculum designed for an academic minority. To see how things might be different, take the Netherlands, where children are offered a choice of respected secondary education tracks that enable them to develop technical skills and find secure and well-paid employment. My Dutch relatives, who loved their educations, were established as a hairdresser and an IT technician in recent years. When will progressive parties in the UK have the courage to grasp the nettle of academic bias in the school curriculum that was intentionally…

Musical School of Rock Based on the hit film Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber Book: Julian Fellowes Lyrics: Glenn Slater New London Theatre, London WC2 (0844-811 0052) Until 9 April 2017 Running time: 2hrs 30mins (including interval) Wondering what to book as a festive family treat? Wonder no more, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. The stupendous School of Rock – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s best show in years, and already a “stonking” hit on Broadway – has arrived in the West End with an “almighty kerrang of confidence”, and it is simply “the most enjoyable few hours money can buy”. Somehow, Lloyd Webber and his team have improved on the much-loved Hollywood film, a delicious “fairy tale of salvation through disobedience” in which a rock-loving slob wangles a job at…

Best books… Chris Tarrant Broadcaster Chris Tarrant, the former host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, picks his favourite books. His own new book, Chris Tarrant’s Extreme Railway Journeys (John Blake £20), accompanies the Channel 5 TV series The Last Don by Mario Puzo, 1996 (Arrow £8.99). I rarely watch films twice, but I’ve seen Puzo’s Godfather trilogy over and over again. The Last Don is in the same brilliant vein. An old, wise but ruthless crime boss destroys his enemies and creates further bloody gang warfare. Puzo depicts a treacherous, savage world where everybody’s life can be bought and wiped out. Life by Keith Richards, 2010 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £8.99). The ultimate rock’n’roll book, by a rock’n’roll survivor who has seen it all – the tours, the sex,…

Home-made mincemeat Makes 1kg, enough for about 45 mince pies 1 large green apple, peeled, cored and grated juice and finely grated zest of 1 lemon 100g shredded beef suet 250g combination of raisins, sultanas and currants 50g dates, finely chopped juice and finely grated zest of 1 orange 100g candied peel, finely chopped 50g crystallised ginger, finely chopped 120g light muscovado sugar 1 tsp each ground ginger, cinnamon and allspice ¼ tsp ground cloves ¼ whole fresh nutmeg, finely grated small pinch salt 3 tbsp rum 150g golden syrup • In a large bowl, mix the apple with the lemon juice and toss to coat. Add all the other ingredients except for the rum and golden syrup. Mix well then set aside overnight to macerate. • Preheat oven to…

Great Irish storyteller who won three Whitbread Prizes William Trevor 1928-2016 William Trevor, who has died aged 88, was an Irish-born writer whose beautifully crafted, elegantly understated stories and novels about the travails of unremarkable people “placed him in the company of such masters as V.S. Pritchett, W. Somerset Maugham and Chekhov”, said The New York Times. Melancholic, stark and sometimes darkly funny, his plots tend to unfold in small Irish or English villages, and feature people struggling on the lower rungs of life. “I’m very interested in the sadness of fate,” he said, “the things that just happen to people.” Yet his cast “was extraordinarily varied”. As the critic Ted Solotaroff wrote in 1982: “His farmers and priests and men of the turf are as convincing and suggestive as…

TPP collapse leaves a worrying void Editorial The Economist Donald Trump’s decision to pull America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has killed “the world’s most ambitious trade deal”, says The Economist. The pact’s 11 remaining members could theoretically stagger on, but lack of access to America’s huge consumer market will probably prove fatal. The consequences are far-reaching. The TPP’s collapse leaves “a gaping hole in the architecture of Asian commerce”, at a time when strong winds are already “buffeting global trade”. And it’s a “body blow” to US economic policy in Asia. The question now is whether China – conspicuously absent from the TPP – will “step in with an alternative trade deal”. Beijing is keen to take advantage of US disengagement in Asia by pushing for an even…

“A boy stands to offer thanks. ‘I’d like to give an appreciation to my teacher for giving me a detention for failing to annotate my work’” At 12.30pm sharp, a throng of 11-year-olds crowds into the lunch hall and starts to chant Kipling’s If: “If you can dream – and not make dreams your master…” Poem completed, they move silently to their tables, each named after a university – Imperial, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge. Pupils serve food, collect plates, wipe the tables and hand out water. Over lunch they will debate a set topic; for example, is Winston Churchill the most inspirational person you have read about in history? The food is always vegetarian and there is a brief time allocated for eating it. My meat-free sausages are cleared away unfinished…