Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1111 i The Week

What happened Trump’s shock therapy Donald Trump reacted with fury last week when a federal judge overturned his executive order temporarily barring entry into the US for people from seven Muslim-majority countries. Trump questioned the legitimacy of the “so-called judge”, and vowed to overturn the “ridiculous” ruling, which he claimed put the US in danger. “If something happens blame him and court system,” he fumed in a tweet. The White House also took some combative steps on the foreign policy front, imposing new sanctions on Iran after it test-fired a ballistic missile. “Iran is playing with fire,” said Trump. “They don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!” He reportedly cut short a phone call with the Australian prime minister after clashing with him over an agreement…

New Zealand is a lifeboat for the super-rich Peter Foster The Daily Telegraph The tech billionaires are heading for the hills, says Peter Foster: the hills of New Zealand, to be precise. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, has bought a 477-acre estate on Lake Wanaka, and he’s just one of 92 high-net-worth individuals who have been granted NZ citizenship under special terms for the super-rich. Whatever the reason – maybe Donald Trump has spooked them; maybe it’s the rise of robots – they’re seeking a “lifeboat” destination, ideally with its own landing strip, to survive Armageddon. But we’ve been here before. Back in 1999, another set of people “with too much time and money” fled to NZ to escape the millennium bug, which, it was said, would bring everything powered…

New hope for locked-in patients “Complete locked-in syndrome” is a terrifying form of paralysis, in which the patient remains mentally aware but is incapable of moving any part of their body – not even their eyes, as in the more common “locked-in syndrome”. Kept alive with feeding tubes and ventilators, they have no way of communicating with the outside world. But now, an experimental study has found that there is a way of reaching at least some of these patients. Researchers at Germany’s University of Tübingen developed a cap that uses infrared light to detect variations in blood flow to different parts of the brain. In tests, four completely locked-in patients wore these caps while the team asked them simple closed questions – e.g. is Berlin the capital of France?…

Johnny Depp has 14 properties, an $18m private yacht and his own string of paradise islands, according to his former business managers. The Hollywood star is suing Joel and Robert Mandel, claiming they mishandled his finances. But the Mandel brothers have countersued, saying Depp was incapable of living within his means. They claim he spent $2m a month living high on the hog – with his wine bill alone costing $30,000 a month. He also spent $3m having the ashes of his friend Hunter S. Thompson blasted across Colorado from a bespoke cannon. Nigel Farage has denied leaving his German-born wife for a French mistress. The former UKIP leader admitted that his marriage was experiencing “ups and downs”, but said he was just friends with Laure Ferrari, the 37-year-old think…

Donald Trump has been in his job for less than a month, said Patrick Kidd in The Times, but he “has already earned the right to join one of the most esteemed, if not particularly exclusive, clubs in Westminster”. Members wear a badge showing three bumblebees, which is code for “Bollocked by Bercow”. A badge should be on its way to Washington after John Bercow’s outburst this week: the Speaker of the Commons laid into the US president, saying he wouldn’t be welcome at Westminster during his state visit later this year, because of his racism, sexism and contempt for the judiciary. “An address by a foreign leader to both Houses of Parliament is not an automatic right, it is an earned honour,” declared Bercow. Parts of the Commons erupted…

Alastair Cook had clearly had enough, said Mike Atherton in The Times. You could see it in “the blank eyes, the defeated body language, the air of resignation”. So it was no surprise when he resigned as England Test captain this week, after four-and-a-half years at the helm. At 32, the Essex batsman still has a couple of years of playing left in him, and he’ll remain in the ranks “doing what he does best: cutting, clipping, pulling and wearing bowlers down”. It was a captaincy of contrasts: when his team were good, they were “very, very good”; when they were bad, they were dreadful. Cook deserves to be remembered for the triumphs, said Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail. He scaled heights “as vertiginous” as any faced by his…

Exiting Labour To The Guardian David Parker refers to “Corbyn’s principled acceptance of the referendum result”. Labour Party policy for decades has been for the UK to be a member of the EU. I am not aware that the policy process in the Labour Party has changed that position. It may have happened since I resigned in November over the John McDonnell “Brexit opportunities” speech, but I don’t think so. So, less principled and more opportunistic. Bob Nicholson, Frodsham, Cheshire Fear the robots To The Daily Telegraph Andrew Haldenby doesn’t worry enough. It’s not only the unions that should fear AI (artificial intelligence); it’s all of us. As I have written elsewhere, society and the economy face a threat as bad as a new deadly virus or nuclear…

Theatre The Glass Menagerie Playwright: Tennessee Williams Director: John Tiffany Duke of York’s Theatre, London WC2 (0844-871 7623) Until 29 April Running time: 2hrs 40mins (including interval) ★★★★ Before his triumphant West End staging of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, British director John Tiffany had already made his mark with this revival of Tennessee Williams’ autobiographical breakthrough play, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. It was a hit on Broadway in 2013, and at last summer’s Edinburgh International Festival. Now it has transferred to London for a limited run – and it still “casts a potent spell”. At a time when the fashion is to wrench plays out of their period, Tiffany “sews The Glass Menagerie tightly into its historical context”, said Matt Trueman on WhatsOnStage.com – and the…

Best books… Jay McInerney Jay McInerney, bestselling author of Bright Lights, Big City, picks his favourite books set in New York. His new novel, Bright, Precious Days, published by Bloomsbury at £16.99, completes his trilogy about a Manhattan couple, the Calloways The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, 1905 (Collins £2.50). This insider’s portrait of 19th century New York high society follows the declining fortunes of husband-hunting Lily Bart, one of the great characters of American literature. Wharton is an amusingly ruthless observer of the manners and mores of the wealthy. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West, 1933 (Daunt Books £7.99). This black comedy, set in Depression-era Manhattan, follows the career of a cynical advice columnist who struggles to find a moral compass while dispensing trite advice, under the name Miss…

A new study has found that organic wines consistently score higher than their non-organic counterparts in three of the world’s best wine-rating magazines, says Jane MacQuitty in The Times. But in my experience, these wines can be very variable, so you do have to choose carefully. Here are some suggestions… Vintage Roots (0118-932 6566) lists more than 400 organic drinks, of which the star is the “light, tongue-tingling” apple and lemon-edged Il Grillo di Santa Tresa Vino Spumante Brut (£12.75) – a “triumph”. For a real bargain, I’d suggest Chile’s Santa Emiliana: either the buttery, banana-tinged 2015 Silbador Organic Chardonnay, or the juicy, plum-stashed 2015 Silbador Merlot, both £6.50 (www.thewinesociety.com). Waitrose’s “gorgeous, creamy, black cherry-ripe” Australian 2015 Hedonist Shiraz (£13.99), and its “stunning, gutsy, cinnamon-scented” red 2013 Font de Michelle,…

Plain-speaking retailer who created a supermarket giant Sir Ken Morrison 1931-2017 Sir Ken Morrison began working in his father’s grocery when he was still in short trousers, and over the next 50 years, turned it into one of the UK’s biggest food retailers. Plain-speaking, parsimonious and private, he had a simple formula, said The Guardian: to offer his working-class customers “outstanding value for money” and a “pleasant shopping experience”. He kept costs as low as possible, and insisted on retaining the atmosphere of a street market in his shops, with vegetables, fish and meat all in their own “stalls”. Morrisons was also unusual in controlling much of its own supply chain. The supermarket owned its own abattoirs, packed its own meat and veg, and even made its own carrier bags.…

The Government has “fired the starting gun on its largest ever sale of student loans to private investors”, in an effort to reduce Britain’s ballooning debt, said the FT. First to be sold will be the 2002-06 loan book, consisting of around £4bn worth of loans made to some 450,000 students. But eventually, all loans issued before 2012 – reckoned to be worth some £12bn – will be divested. Although the Government has previously marketed “older, mortgage- style student loans”, this is the “first foray into selling debt whose repayments depend on graduates’ earnings passing a defined threshold”. The price gained “is expected to be lower than face value, since not all the debt will be repaid in full”. The Universities Minister, Jo Johnson, insists there will be “no impact”…

Xiao Jianhua The financier Xiao Jianhua was once known as “the JPMorgan of China”, says Ben Bland in the FT. His abduction last month from the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong – a common retreat for tycoons who have fallen foul of President Xi Jinping – sends a renewed warning about Xi’s determination to root out those with “questionable dealings or connections” with his political rivals. Like other fallen princelings, “chubby-faced” Xiao, 45, was close to former leader Jiang Zemin; he is now said to be in custody on the mainland. Xiao’s Tomorrow Group invested in everything from chemical plants and coal mines to the insurance giant Ping An. But there’s more at stake than his billions. His disappearance “undermines confidence” in Hong Kong’s ability to uphold its laws.…

Controversy of the week Who will help the aged? “Iris Sibley was admitted to hospital in June last year after a fall,” said Rachel Sylvester in The Times. She was declared fit to leave a few weeks later, yet she was trapped on a ward in Bristol Royal Infirmary until January because no place could be found for her in a local nursing home. Not only was this “hugely distressing” for a frail 89-year-old woman with dementia, it also cost the NHS more than £80,000. Her story has “caught the public imagination, but the truth is that this is a story that could have been told a thousand times up and down the country”. Nearly one in ten NHS beds is now taken by someone who is well enough to…

Margolyes’ crappy problem Miriam Margolyes has always been one to speak her mind, says Donna Ferguson in The Observer. Now, at 75, the actress wants to discuss the realities of ageing. “Nobody tells you that old age is going to be shitty,” she says. “It’s a kind of conspiracy.” In her case, osteoporosis and a knee operation have made her frail and slow-moving, and surgery to remove a kidney stone has left her with stress incontinence. “I have to be near a toilet because if I cough or sneeze, I can piss myself. I think it’s common among people my age, but nobody ever talks about it.” She got caught short recently while walking in Hampstead. “I knocked on a door and said I’m terribly sorry but I’m going to…

An orangutan at a zoo in Holland is being allowed to select her mate from pictures on an iPad. Often, animals involved in international breeding programmes have gone home without mating, explained a biologist at the zoo. The hope is that if 11-year-old Samboja is allowed to choose her own partner, the date will work out better. Inevitably, the experiment has been dubbed “Tinder for orangutans”. A new app aims to help people find love by tapping into their mutual hatreds. Known as Hater, the app asks people to swipe to indicate whether they love, hate or are indifferent to a person, or idea, and then connects them to users who share their prejudices. Its creators say it is absolutely not designed to unite bigots or racists, but to match…

MEXICO What a feeble way to deal with Trump Proceso (Mexico City) Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto is making a pig’s ear of dealing with Donald Trump, says Jesús Cantú. His first terrible mistake was to agree to meet him before the US election had even been decided, treating the Mexico-bashing Republican candidate as if he were a head of state. Having thus infuriated the public, he blamed it all on then-finance minister Luis Videgaray, a pal of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who’d acted as go-between. Then he brought Videgaray back as foreign minister, and dispatched him and the new finance minister to talk to Trump’s team, making it look as if Mexico was happy to cooperate on trashing the trade deal and building the wall. The pair even scheduled…

With a wrinkled sack-like body, an outsized mouth and no sign of an anus, Saccorhytus coronarius – a microscopic fossilised organism discovered in China – doesn’t look very human. Yet a team of researchers from China, Germany and Cambridge University think it may be our oldest evolutionary ancestor. Measuring about 1mm, the invertebrate sea-dweller is a primitive member of the deuterostome group – prehistoric organisms which count among their living descendants echinoderms (such as starfish and sea urchins), hemichordates (acorn worms) and vertebrates (including us). At 540 million years old, it is the oldest deuterostome ever found, by up to 20 million years; and is thought to be our oldest relative. In addition to its mouth, the creature – which is believed to have lived on the seabed – has…

David Beckham fans who don’t want to be “as sick as a parrot” should – as they say on the news before Match of the Day – “look away now”, said Rachel Johnson in The Mail on Sunday. Last week, hackers released a stash of private emails from the football star to his PR agent – and they make for dismal reading. Beckham has spent years cultivating his image as a modest family man. Yet here, he comes across as an angry and venal narcissist, whose charity works are motivated not so much by a desire to change children’s lives (as he claimed on Desert Island Discs) as to secure a knighthood. Beckham’s people say the emails have been doctored, and taken out of context – but the gist has…

“Spiralisers across the land stand idle,” said Xanthe Clay in The Daily Telegraph. There is “hand-wringing” in the vegetable aisle, and hysteria in the press. An unusually wet and cold winter in Spain has led to a vegetable shortage in British supermarkets. Courgettes, salad leaves and broccoli are in short supply. Morrisons is rationing customers to three heads of broccoli each, and Tesco is doing the same for iceberg lettuce. A black market in veg has rapidly sprung up, with a box of lettuces advertised on Gumtree for £50, and eBay selling icebergs for up to £4.99 each. The good news, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent, is that a mountain of lettuce and other vegetables is “even now being hastily harvested” in California and “despatched by airfreight halfway across…

“After endless false dawns, Scotland have finally arrived,” said Richard Bath in The Sunday Telegraph. Last Saturday, in the first match of the Six Nations, they defeated tournament favourites Ireland 27-22. It was “a triumph of spirit and guts”: the Scots dominated the first half, only to spend the second “hanging on by their fingertips”. Too often in the past, they would have crumbled at the last minute. But this time they played with confidence and verve; their “vicious” edge out wide yielded two tries for their “brilliant” full-back, Stuart Hogg. In just three years, Scotland have made huge progress, said Alasdair Reid in The Times. When Vern Cotter took over as coach in 2014, the team was “in disarray”. At the Six Nations two years ago, they lost every…

To The Daily Telegraph David Mowat, the care minister, has been “struck” by what he believes is our contrasting attitude to caring for our children and looking after our ageing parents. “Nobody ever questions the fact that we look after our children,” he says, and “some of that logic… will have to impinge on the way we start thinking about how we look after our parents.” The figures suggest that Mr Mowat’s thinking is outdated. The care and support provided to disabled and elderly people by their relatives, friends and neighbours is thought to be worth £132bn. This figure exceeds the total NHS budget of £129bn. It dwarfs the adult social care budgets of local authorities, a figure of just under £17bn gross, and £14.4bn net of means-tested charges. Taken…

LEISURE Food & Drink Cambium Careys Manor Hotel, Lyndhurst Road, Brockenhurst, Hampshire (01590-623551) The lighting in this restaurant, in an upscale New Forest hotel, is a little hard, says Keith Miller in The Daily Telegraph; the atmosphere in the cream-beigey room, “sparsely ornamented with woody paraphernalia”, is a little too formal. And when I visited, there was something “vaguely deranged” about the reverence of the service. I was “addressed, mirthfully, in the third person as Sir”. Still, on the whole, Sir liked his food very much. An amuse-bouche of onion velouté was light and aerated; a beef cheek carpaccio with a quail’s egg was tender and deep-flavoured. “Sir’s main course was an immaculately cooked loin of venison” with tangy red cabbage and pleasingly offal-tinged pithivier, while Madam went for…

London Stock Exchange/Deutsche Börse: on or off? There is a lot riding on the London Stock Exchange’s proposed £21bn merger with Deutsche Börse, said Harry Wilson in The Times: “advisors to the two sides will share fees of s307m if the deal is completed”. But the hurdles seem to be getting “higher and more challenging” as political opposition grows, “stoked by Britain’s decision to quit the EU”. New allegations that Deutsche Börse boss Carsten Kengeter engaged in s4.5m of insider dealing in December 2015, just before the deal was announced, haven’t helped. Kengeter insists his share purchases were “wholly legitimate”– and both Deutsche Börse and the LSE have backed him. But the probe is a “hand grenade”, said Ben Marlow in The Sunday Telegraph. It is likely “to exact maximum…

An economy running on empty… Editorial The Economist For the past seven months, the British economy has defied predictions of a post-Brexit vote recession, says The Economist. New figures show that the economy grew by 2% in 2016, “faster than any other G7 country”; the second half was even better than the first. But much of this growth has been sustained by a consumer “spending spree” that “may be nearing its end”. Given that real disposable household income rose by about 3% a year between 2014 and 2016 (after several years of shrinking), it’s not surprising spending remained strong after the vote. The result “may even have spurred consumption. Half of voters plumped for Leave, after all”. But a halving of consumer-credit growth in December suggests that, with the onset…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys 32Red The Times Shares in the online casino betting firm have been held back by regulation worries. But growth is being fuelled by operational improvements and the 2015 acquisition of Roxy Palace; profits should rise sharply. Buy. 139p. Diageo Investors Chronicle The drinks giant, which owns a host of world-class brands, is seeing improving margins, thanks to spirits sales growth and cost efficiencies. The Scotch business is gaining US market share, and cash flows are improving. Buy. £22.41. GlaxoSmithKline The Sunday Times The impressive turnaround at Britain’s biggest drug developer is down to its strategy of selling huge volumes of cheap drugs in emerging markets. A rock-solid consumer division helps. “A stable bet in a volatile world.” Buy. £15.47. Low & Bonar The…

Berlin Merkel’s faltering support: A sudden, massive opinion poll surge in favour of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) has suggested that Angela Merkel will face a tougher than expected battle for re-election later this year. The SPD, currently junior partners in Merkel’s “grand coalition”, announced a fortnight ago that its candidate for chancellor in this autumn’s general election would not be the current party leader, Sigmar Gabriel, but Martin Schulz, the combative former president of the European Parliament. Since then, support for the SPD has risen ten points to around 30%, putting it level with, or even slightly ahead of, Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU). Polls also show Schulz (pictured) beating Merkel as voters’ preferred choice as chancellor. Paris Louvre machete attack: An Egyptian man was shot last week after launching…

Undoing Obama’s “revolution” Victor Davis Hanson National Review Don’t be fooled by Donald Trump’s unorthodox style, says Victor Davis Hanson. Behind the belligerent, “grating” manner that has so alarmed liberals is a mostly centrist agenda. Critics think his policies represent some wild departure, but for the most part they just mark a return to how things were before Barack Obama’s presidency. People have forgotten how radical that presidency was. Obama didn’t campaign on a “hard-left agenda”: his original platform included opposition to gay marriage, promises to balance the budget, and a bipartisan foreign policy. But after his election, Obama ditched the “relatively centrist” agenda for a “staunchly progressive” one. He proposed immigrant amnesties, pushed through a “revolutionary federal absorption of health care”, and bypassed the Senate on a treaty with…

By the age of six, some girls are already starting to associate cleverness with men, a new US study suggests. For the research – which involved 200 girls and 200 boys, all aged between five and seven – children were read a story about a “really, really smart” person, in which no clues as to their gender were given. Afterwards, they were shown pictures of two men and two women, and asked to guess which was the story’s protagonist. The five-year-olds – male and female – were more likely to nominate one of the adults of their own gender. But among the six- and seven-year-olds, that parity disappeared: the girls were significantly more likely than the boys to identify cleverness with the opposite gender. In further tests, girls also expressed…

In the eyes of this country’s “self-righteous legal establishment”, Phil Shiner was a fearless campaigner for justice, said the Daily Mail. Any criticism of the human rights lawyer was, until recently, dismissed as “media-manufactured vilification”. Well, “now the truth is clear”. Last week Shiner was struck off for professional misconduct. He was found to have been repeatedly dishonest when bringing cases against British troops stationed in Iraq: he illegally paid an Iraqi middleman to “drum up” claims that civilians had been killed, mutilated and tortured by British soldiers. (The Al-Sweady inquiry, set up to examine these claims, rejected them as the product of “deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility”.) He also paid the middleman to cover up this arrangement in his evidence to the inquiry. So Shiner isn’t just…

“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.” Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, quoted on The Browser “Death is what gets poets up in the morning.” American poet Billy Collins, quoted in The Guardian “What’s the point of having a conscience if you never use it?” Gina Miller in The Times “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” Voltaire, quoted on Forbes “Behind every failure there is an opportunity someone wishes they missed.” Lily Tomlin, quoted on People.com “What’s the difference between a non-executive director and a supermarket trolley? You can get more wine into a director.” Grocer Sir Ken Morrison, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “Husbands are like fires. They go out when unattended.” Zsa Zsa Gabor, quoted…

It was this time last year, when Leicester won 3-1 at Manchester City, that their dream of winning the Premier League “started to take hold”, said Stuart James in The Guardian. Fast forward 12 months, however, and “the fairy tale has turned into a nightmare”. Having lost 3-0 to Manchester United on Sunday, the Foxes are only two points off the bottom of the table. The sole club in the top four divisions that haven’t scored this year, they are in “real danger” of becoming the first top-flight champions to be relegated since 1938. Just last month, Claudio Ranieri (pictured) was named Fifa coach of the year; now, the bookies are tipping him for the sack. So what has gone wrong for the “Cinderella club”, asked Jonathan Northcroft in The…

Beetroot hummus with squid ink crackers Serves 4-6 140g canned chickpeas/garbanzos, drained and rinsed 250g beetroot/ beets, cooked and cubed 1 large garlic clove, peeled 2 tbsps olive oil 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice 2 tbsps tahini 2-3 pinches of sea salt flakes micro herbs such as pea shoots, to garnish For the crackers: 300g plain/all-purpose flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt ½ tsp cayenne pepper 80ml olive oil 3x 4g squid ink sachets • To make the hummus, put all of the ingredients in a food processor or blender and blitz until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning, as needed. • To make the crackers, preheat the oven to 180°C. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and cayenne pepper together and then…

New cars: what the critics say Auto Express “Few people buy a Hyundai because they desperately want one.” The Korean brand is seen as the car equivalent of a white-goods manufacturer, producing “capable” vehicles that tend to score low “in the style stakes”. With the new, third-generation i30, however, Hyundai is looking to transform its reputation: it wants this family hatchback to be a credible rival to the VW Golf. The Daily Telegraph The car looks promising enough, with a handsome – if “unadventurous” – exterior. The same goes for the cabin, where most materials are “fabulously rendered”; there’s a “classy” dashboard and a nice infotainment screen. Whichever model you go for, the i30 is comfortable, “well-equipped” and spacious – the 395-litre boot expands to 1,301 litres with the rear…