Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1157 i The Week

What happened The Remainer revolt Liam Fox called this week for an end to the “obsessive” criticism of Brexit. Opponents of the UK’s departure from the EU needed to “lift their horizons”, said the International Trade Secretary; Brexit was “not a time bomb to be defused, but a great opportunity to be embraced”. His words came after a controversial intervention last week by Lord Heseltine, who suggested a Jeremy Corbyn-led government might be a less damaging option than Brexit, because Labour would only cause “short-term” damage, whereas Brexit would be a “long-term disaster”. There were people in the Conservatives, said Heseltine, who were “seriously wondering which way to vote”. His comments prompted some Tories to call for him to lose the party whip. Days after Heseltine’s intervention, Lord Adonis resigned…

Berkeley, California Pot legalisation kicks in: California has become the sixth US state to legalise the sale of marijuana for recreational use. The state, the most populous in the country, became the first to legalise the drug’s sale for medicinal purposes 22 years ago; and in 2016, residents voted in a referendum to relax the laws further. The new law came into force on New Year’s Day. Some cities, including LA, have yet to begin issuing the necessary licences, but in Berkeley, near San Francisco, queues outside one of the country’s oldest dispensaries snaked around the block from 6am until late afternoon on the first day of trading. Los Angeles Hollywood fights harassment: Hundreds of Hollywood actresses, directors, producers and agents have joined a sprawling initiative to counter sexual harassment…

UNITED STATES Gone are the boom towns of yesteryear The New York Times Where are America’s boom towns today, asks Emily Badger. Throughout its history, the country’s cities have transformed into hotbeds of growth and prosperity. San Francisco became a boom town due to the 1850s gold rush; Detroit tripled in size between 1910 and 1930 thanks to the rise of the car industry; Los Angeles exploded in the 1920s as film sets, oil wells and aircraft plants drew in migrants seeking their fortune. As for Chicago, in 1850 it was a muddy frontier town of 30,000 souls; by 1910 it was “hog butcher for the world” and the nerve centre of the US rail network, with more than two million residents. But America no longer creates boom towns. The…

An eighth planet has been spotted orbiting a distant star named Kepler-90, making it the first planetary system known to host as many planets as our own. Kepler-90i – a sizzlingly hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 Earth days – was found after astronomers using the Kepler space telescope teamed up with artificial intelligence experts from Google. The collaboration involved teaching AI software to infer the existence of exoplanets from light signals recorded by the telescope (tiny variations in the light indicate that a planet may be passing in front of a star). Inspired by human brains, and capable of learning from its mistakes, the program is what is known as a neural network. Sifting through mounds of data from 670 star systems, this network found…

Taylor bows out In the end, there was no “fairytale finish” for Phil Taylor, says Paul MacInnes in The Guardian. In his final tournament before retirement, the Stoke-on-Trent darts legend was favourite to beat first-time PDC World Championship competitor Rob Cross in the final. Instead, Cross, a former electrician “who turned professional only last year”, annihilated the 16-time world champion 7-2. Cross was magnanimous in victory – laudably so, given the capacity crowd at Alexandra Palace was almost exclusively backing Taylor. It was a heartening occasion all round: “As a legend of the oche bowed out, a new star was born.” Kane’s record year All hail Harry Kane, says Henry Winter in The Times. The Tottenham striker’s hat-trick against Southampton on Boxing Day took his Premier League tally for the…

Exhibition of the week Charles II: Art & Power Queen’s Gallery, London SW1 (0303-123 7300, www.royalcollection.org.uk ). Until 13 May Charles II had the misfortune to reign in an era “freighted with a rare tonnage of national botheration”, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. His father Charles I, of course, “paid the ultimate price for his royalty” when he was beheaded by the victorious Cromwellians in 1649. Arguably Charles II, who regained the throne in 1660 after a decade of Puritan dictatorship, occupied “an even hotter seat”. A closet Catholic in a zealously Protestant land, he was acutely aware that he might suffer the same fate as his father. Yet, as this “uplifting” new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery reveals, Charles was a “brilliant operator who…

An opulent Upper East Side hideaway The Lowell, New York Within easy reach of Midtown Manhattan, but aloof from its hustle and bustle, this recently renovated, “superbly understated” 1920s landmark on East 63rd Street and Madison Avenue offers a taste of “old-time glamour”, says GQ. Its new Mediterranean-influenced French restaurant, Majorelle, run by Charles Masson (previously of Le Grenouille), is a gem, and the Pembroke Room, now fresher and airier, is a pretty spot for breakfast or tea. Designed by Michael S. Smith, the rooms are “regal” in their elegance, with Persian rugs on mahogany floors, interesting art and lots of books. Some have landscaped terraces, many have wood-burning fires and there’s even an in-room dining menu for dogs (go for the filet mignon tartare with potatoes). Doubles from…

Where are stock markets heading? Global stock market indexes ended 2017 at a record high after a year of continued loose monetary policy and high corporate profits. In America, the S&P500 was up 20% on the year, Germany’s Dax 13%, and the French market up 10%. In the UK, stocks rose 7%, said Patrick Collinson in The Observer – the more modest uptick reflecting concerns over Brexit, and weak growth in GDP and wages. From here on, though, commentators are “virtually unanimous” in predicting that returns in 2018 won’t match last year’s. Counter-intuitively, those analysts expecting economic growth to strengthen are the most bearish when it comes to “risk assets”, such as stocks, said the FT. That looks realistic. If monetary stimulus (very low interest rates) gives way to a…

Who’s tipping what The best buys for the year ahead AB Dynamics Shares With a growing portfolio of testing products and services used by the world’s top 25 automotive firms, AB is “slap bang in the middle of the electric vehicle revolution”. Profits are forecast to rise substantially. Buy. 937.5p. Balfour Beatty The Sunday Times Britain’s biggest builder’s turnaround plan is delivering. Costs have been cut and the balance sheet is strong, with its book of private finance initiative contracts filling up. Margins are rising and the dividend is improving. Buy. 297p. Boohoo The Mail on Sunday Online retailer Boohoo is “one of the leading lights of the fast-fashion revolution”. The acquisition of rivals Nasty Gal and PrettyLittleThing, and a clothing line endorsed by Kourtney Kardashian, should boost sales and…

Controversy of the week Pain on the trains “It has become the inevitable ingredient of every new year,” said The Times: the annual row over rising train fares. Bleary commuters returning to work on Tuesday faced average price hikes of 3.4% – the highest in five years – while on some routes fares rose by almost three times as much. Yet again, the increases outpaced inflation, imposing a growing burden on workers at a time of wage stagnation (fares are pegged to the retail price index, which is thought to overstate inflation, rather than the more accurate consumer price index). What a disgrace, said the Daily Mail. Throughout 2017, travellers endured “a litany of failures”: chronic overcrowding, endless delays and cancellations, thousands of strikes. To add insult to injury, it…

Asleep on the wild side For more than 60 years, David Attenborough has travelled the world in search of interesting animals to film. The accommodation hasn’t always been up to scratch. Once, in a remote part of Paraguay, Attenborough and his film crew got caught in a heavy rainstorm. “Unexpectedly, with no maps, we came to a clearing and there was this [woodcutter’s] hut,” he told Louise Flind in The Oldie. The woodcutter let them sleep in the storeroom, which was filled with huge earthenware pots. “As I lay there, I heard a strange, rustling noise. I found a torch, and the wall alongside me was covered with a shining, moving carpet of cockroaches. There was also a hideous stench of dried, smoked fish – that was what was in…

Madrid has suffered a crushing defeat in its struggle to stop Catalonia gaining independence, said Le Monde (Paris). In October, Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, dissolved Catalonia’s parliament, took temporary control of the regional government and ordered fresh elections to be held there in the run-up to Christmas. He felt confident the Catalans would take this as their chance to affirm their wish to stay with Spain. Alas for him, the voters did no such thing. The three separatist parties lost two seats, but they still secured a majority, winning 70 seats in the 135-seat parliament and vindicating the pro-independence stance of deposed Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, who is in self-imposed exile in Belgium. True, the pro-unionist centre-right Citizens party was the single biggest winner, with 37 seats, but lacking…

Nearly half of adults in England are taking at least one prescription medicine, according to a new NHS survey. Of the 8,000 people questioned for the snapshot survey, 48% were taking one drug in the preceding week; 24% were taking three; while among over 75s, almost half were taking five or more. In total, NHS England dispensed 1.1 billion prescriptions in 2016, an increase of around 47% in a decade. One in seven adults are on statins, one in seven are taking drugs to control their blood pressure, and one in ten are on antidepressants. The greatest increase in prescriptions was for antidepressants: there were 3.7 million more items dispensed in 2016, up 6% on the year before. In the areas described as most deprived, 54% of adults were taking…

A question of honour To The Daily Telegraph I unsuccessfully applied for something for my mother, hoping that she would gain some recognition for more than 30 years’ service as a chairman of governors for a primary school in a deprived area, despite having no personal links to the school and not being in good health. The application process is long-winded and, we are advised, takes 12 to 18 months. There is no notification if the application has been unsuccessful. I contrast this with the tranche of MPs, civil servants and celebrities who seem to have been awarded for simply doing their job. When will the self-congratulatory awards be separated from those that are truly deserved? Helen Roberts, High Peak, Derbyshire What’s in a dame? To The Guardian The award…

Musical Hamilton Book, music and lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda Director: Thomas Kail Victoria Palace Theatre, Victoria Street, London SW1 ( www.ticketmaster.co.uk )Until 28 July Running time: 2hrs 45mins (including interval) ★★★★ The months – years, even – of advance hype for Hamilton, the greatest box-office phenomenon of modern American theatre, has been so overwhelming that London audiences will go into the theatre “groaning with knowledge” about its triumphs, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer: about the storming of the musical theatre stage by rap and hip-hop; about the fabulous unlikeliness of Alexander Hamilton, a relatively uncelebrated 18th century US statesman, as a 21st century musical hero. “About the beautiful elision of America past and present, with the white founding fathers – and mothers – played by mostly black and…

Best books… Alastair Sawday Alastair Sawday, the founder of Sawday’s Special Places to Stay and other accommodation guides, picks his five favourite books. His memoir, Travelling Light, is published by Little, Brown at £20. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, 2014 (Fourth Estate £8.99). A novel of exquisite sensitivity about a German orphan, drawn, ineluctably, by his prodigious talents into the Nazi army, and a blind French girl who has fled Paris with her father – and a secret. The tragedy of war frames a deeply moving story. Devastation cannot quench the human spirit. Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera, 2012 (St. Martin’s Griffin £12.10). Painful and beautiful, this Sri Lankan story even braves a rape scene with poetic awareness. The civil war tale of…

Bubbly TV presenter who found fame on Swap Shop Keith Chegwin 1957-2017 A chirpy Liverpudlian with a wide smile and a high-pitched gurgling laugh, Keith Chegwin, who has died aged 60, was a ubiquitous presence on children’s television in the 1970s. Having started out as a child actor, he became a household name in 1976 as one of the presenters of the BBC’s Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, a hyperactive Saturday morning show launched as a rival to ITV’s anarchic Tiswas. Bubbly and irrepressible, he toured the country, encouraging children to exchange their unwanted toys at live “Swaporamas” and delivering his “wey hey” catchphrase. In an era when most TV presenters were staid figures with cut-glass accents, “Cheggers”, with his novelty jumpers and ad-libbed banter, appealed to a new generation,…

Robots are our friends, not our foes Matt Ridley The Times Are you terrified that driverless cars will put lots of people out of business? Don’t be, says Matt Ridley. They may prove workable on motorways, but I doubt they’ll ever be fit for purpose in congested urban streets or narrow rural lanes. No, like so many other advances over the centuries, the new technology will serve not to drive people out of jobs but to make their lives easier – to assist drivers rather than replace them. That is why we need not fear the rise of the robots. With “every wave of automation since the threshing machine”, we’ve had warnings of mass unemployment... and this never materialises. The real risk with increasing reliance on artificial intelligence is not…

Karlsruhe, Germany Nazi jailed: The so-called “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” has lost his final appeal against a four-year jail term. Oskar Gröning, 96, first came to attention in the 1980s when – alarmed by the claims of Holocaust deniers – he began speaking publicly about his job sorting the cash that was stolen from prisoners on arrival at the Nazi camp. As a result, the former junior SS officer (pictured) was eventually charged with being an accessory to murder and convicted in 2015. Aged 94 at the time, he had appealed on the grounds that going to jail would violate his right to life, an appeal that has now been dismissed. Paris Phones for prisoners: France has unveiled plans to install landline phones in most of its prison cells, to reduce…

Haemophilia breakthrough British doctors say they have had “mind-blowing” results in a small trial to rid patients of haemophilia. People with the disease have a genetic defect that means that they do not produce a protein needed to ensure that blood clots. Unless they regularly inject themselves with blood-clotting factors, they may bleed profusely from even minor injuries, and suffer from bleeding within the joints or brain. For the trial, 13 people with haemophilia A were injected with a single copy of the clotting gene that they were missing. Scientists had long hoped this might work, but had, until now, struggled to find a virus to deliver the gene. More than a year on, 11 of them have levels of the blood-clotting protein, factor VIII, that are at or near…

The Ashes: why England have been “blown away” Well, at least it can’t be a whitewash, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. Having relinquished the Ashes before Christmas, when Australia won the third Test to take an unassailable 3-0 series lead, England’s cricketers held their hosts to a draw in the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne. The previously off form Alastair Cook hit a brilliant 244 not out – the highest Test score by a visiting batsman at the MCG – before Australia’s captain, Steve Smith, patiently saw his side to safety with an unbeaten century of his own. Be in no doubt, however: this series has been “a mismatch”. Australia won the first Test by ten wickets, the second by 120 runs, and the third by an innings…

To The Daily Telegraph In an attempt to reduce the number of unnecessary GP consultations, the Royal College of GPs has advised the public to follow three steps before booking an appointment. One of these is to consult NHS Choices or “similar reputable websites/resources”. But what exactly is a reputable health website? Opaque business models abound, even among trusted websites. Very few, if any, adequately disclose their contributors’ relevant financial interests. Moreover, if a health site carries adverts, the separation between them and editorial can be blurred. Dr Alex May, Manchester To The Daily Telegraph Doctors are looking for strategies to reduce their heavy workloads during the winter months – but surely there is no better way to guarantee an overflowing waiting room than triaging with Dr Google. Ros Groves,…

Molly’s Game Dir: Aaron Sorkin 2hrs 20mins (15) Involving true-life tale of poker and skulduggery ★★★ Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter of The West Wing, has sometimes been criticised for an inability to draw strong, rounded female characters, said Helen O’Hara in Empire. But in this, his directorial debut, he proves his critics wrong. This intriguing drama tells the true story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a former ski racer who reinvents herself as the hostess of high-stakes poker games after injury ends her sporting career. Before long, she finds herself accused of being involved with the Russian mafia, and is forced to hire a big-shot lawyer (Idris Elba) to defend her. But first she must persuade him to take the case. As you’d expect from Sorkin, there’s lots of rapid-fire dialogue…

The reborn A110: “the best and most exciting car I’ve driven in ages” The A110 is one of the “most eagerly awaited” cars scheduled for launch this year, said Ben Barry in Car magazine. It marks the return of Renault’s Alpine brand, which was founded in 1955 and wound down 40 years later. The original A110, first produced in 1962, is “iconic” to classic car enthusiasts; now, the sports car has been reborn as a challenger to the Porsche 718 Cayman, the Alfa Romeo 4C and the like. Featuring an all-new, aluminium platform, it weighs a “very modest” 1,100kg and boasts a mid-engine with a “fairly healthy” 249 bhp. Like the revived Mini, the A110 echoes “the old 1960s model without being mawkish”, said Andrew English in The Daily Telegraph.…

EDF: nuclear madness Last year, the French energy giant EDF was forced to admit that its nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset was at least £1.5bn over budget, and about 15 months behind schedule, said BBC News online. That cost overrun was due, it claimed, to a “better understanding” of construction requirements and UK regulation. Now, incredibly, EDF has offered to cut Hinkley Point C’s current £19.6bn price tag by £5bn, said Alistair Osborne in The Times – but only if it is allowed to build another reactor at Sizewell in Suffolk. Any UK ministers who fall for this “should be certified”. EDF already had a Hinkley prototype at Flamanville, the “French nuke that’s six years late and s7bn over budget”. Thanks to the “insane deal” signed off…

Charles Wilson When Charles Wilson decided, 12 years ago, to leave the relative glamour of running M&S to take on the humdrum cash-and-carry wholesaler Booker, rival retailer Philip Green likened the move to quitting AC Milan for Scunthorpe United. But then Wilson has never been interested in what others think, or in “the trappings of success”, says Ben Laurance in The Sunday Times – which has selected the Booker boss as its Business Person of the Year for 2017. Since he arrived, the formidably bright Wilson has transformed Booker from a company on the verge of collapse into a slick operation that Tesco is buying for nearly £4bn (making his own stake worth £250m). It’s “rather like having taken Scunthorpe United into the Premier League”, notes Wilson. Nigel Travis The…