Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1161 i The Week

What happened Gunning for May Theresa May faced renewed calls to quit this week, as Tory MPs and donors accused her of lacking leadership skills and a clear Brexit strategy. The latest round of speculation about her political survival began last week when the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, suggested in a speech in Davos that Brexit would entail only “very modest” changes to the UK-EU relationship. This enraged Eurosceptics, who saw it as evidence that the PM was backsliding on her promise of a clean break with the EU. Their hackles were further raised when Brussels set out its stance on the Brexit transition period, specifying that the UK will have to follow all EU rules, without being able to shape them, for two years after it leaves the bloc. Michel…

Amazon and the assault on trust Editorial The Guardian Technological innovations often create problems that can’t be fixed, says The Guardian. And in their latest adaptation of artificial intelligence, the likes of Google and Amazon are creating a problem that could prove fatal to society: they’re developing software that can graft the face of one person onto the body of another in totally convincing video simulations. The process is not new, of course. It’s used in Hollywood movies when artificial creatures (think Gollum in The Lord of the Rings) appear alongside real actors. More disturbingly it’s used in fake porn videos, where the face of a celebrity like Emma Watson is grafted onto a porn star’s body. But where such technology once required sophisticated computing capacity, now it will be…

Germany’s social democrats face a hideous dilemma, said Sabine Kinkartz in Deutsche Welle (Bonn). Trounced in last year’s elections, the centre-left SPD needs a period in opposition to regroup. Yet it’s under huge pressure to renew its governing coalition with Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU or risk plunging the country into instability. Heeding the call, party delegates have narrowly voted to start formal talks with the CDU. But that has enraged young activists, who feel that propping up a right-wing government for a third term will destroy their party’s credibility. The membership will have the final say when negotiations are completed – and the activists are now urging people to join and help to vote the deal down. No wonder SPD leader Martin Schulz looks “exhausted”. Should a party so grotesquely…

A step closer to levitation The possibility of human levitation – and the use of tractor beams to suspend and manipulate objects in mid-air – has moved a step closer. Levitation has already been achieved using magnetic beams (as in maglev trains), but that only works with objects that respond to magnetism. So scientists have been trying to suspend objects in sound waves. The difficulty has been size. They’ve only been able to suspend tiny objects in acoustic tractor beams, because any particle bigger than the wavelength of the sound picks up the rotation of the sound field and spins off. Now, though, engineers at the University of Bristol have got around this problem. Instead of using spinning fields, they have created rapidly fluctuating acoustic vortices – like tornadoes of…

If it seems to you that there are more people sleeping on the streets these days than there used to be, you’re right, said George Eaton in the New Statesman. Statistics published last week show that rough sleeping in England has increased for the seventh consecutive year: local authorities estimated that there were 4,751 people bedded down outside on any given night in autumn 2017, up 15% on the previous year. And “it is no coincidence that the rise in rough sleeping began in 2010”; that was the year the Tories started imposing austerity. The reduced funding for homeless hostels and other support services; the “arbitrary” benefits cap; the rise in private rents – they’ve all exacted a terrible toll. This trend is to be “lamented”, said The Daily Telegraph,…

How do you stop a team like Manchester City, asked Mark Ogden on ESPN FC. Pep Guardiola’s side have lost only once in the Premier League this season, to Liverpool, and enjoy an all but insurmountable lead at the top of the table. But as opponents run out of “legitimate ways” to thwart City, they’re resorting to “physical intimidation”. In their 2-0 loss to City, in the fourth round of the FA Cup, Championship side Cardiff City “took it to another level”: their defender Joe Bennett “scythed down” Leroy Sané with a horrific tackle that will sideline the winger for weeks. It was a throwback to the “bad old days” when English football was “like the Wild West”. Nobody disputes that football is a “physical game”, said Henry Winter in…

To The Guardian Among the understandable outrage at the sleazy Presidents Club affair, I see no mention of the fact that the hostesses knowingly participated. They could have refused the job, refused to wear the provocative clothes and refused to wait on these dinosaurs. But the money is good and they must have been fully aware of what was likely to occur. Until we women refuse to undertake “hostessing”, it will continue in clubs and parties throughout the land. Jane Ghosh, Bristol To The Guardian Jane Ghosh asserts that the hostesses “knowingly participated” in the Presidents Club event and should have refused the job offer. Does she really think the woman who endured a man exposing his penis to her knew what she was letting herself in for? Or the…

Best books… Tariq Goddard Novelist and publisher Tariq Goddard picks his six favourite family sagas. His latest novel, Nature and Necessity, about a family of social-climbing bohemians, is published by Repeater Books at £9.99. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, 1936 (Vintage £9.99). The most effective way of telling the history of a region, or of a country, is to focus on the ultimate tribal unit, the family. You can then measure, as Faulkner does, who is able to get away from home, how far they go and how long it takes for them to come back. The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, 1965 (Faber £9.99). A play that casts a father and his sons in a Hobbesian struggle for the wife of their estranged son and brother, revealing that there is…

Serves 16 shortbread: 40g icing sugar 35g cornflour 40g caster sugar 175g unsalted butter, melted and set aside to cool slightly ½ tsp vanilla extract 250g plain flour 1/8 tsp salt halva: 200g halva, roughly crumbled into small pieces 80g tahini tahini caramel: 200g caster sugar 120ml water 100g unsalted butter, room temperature, cubed 80ml double cream 150g tahini paste ¼ tsp flaky sea salt • Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line a 20cm square tin with baking parchment, making sure that the paper rises up over the edges of the tin. • For the shortbread, sift the icing sugar and cornflour into the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment in place, then add the caster sugar and mix on a medium speed. With the machine still…

Legendary jazz trumpeter who played for Nelson Mandela Hugh Masekela 1939-2018 “If I can get a trumpet, I won’t bother anyone any more.” That was the promise that Hugh Masekela – then a delinquent 14-year-old – made to the chaplain of his school near Johannesburg in 1953. The chaplain, Trevor Huddleston, duly raised the money to buy him an instrument and found a trumpeter to teach him too. So it was that Masekela, who has died aged 78, became one of the world’s “finest and most distinctive horn players”, said The Guardian. Yet he did not keep his promise not to “bother anyone”: on the contrary, as a prominent figure in the anti-apartheid struggle, he was a thorn in the flesh of the apartheid regime. Hugh Masekela was born into…

Controversy of the week Taking on big tech The big event at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week was meant to be Donald Trump’s appearance, said John Cassidy in The New Yorker. As it turned out, he was “upstaged by another elderly Manhattan billionaire: George Soros”. In a blistering speech, the investor and crusading philanthropist inveighed against “the rise and monopolistic behaviour of the giant IT platform companies”, particularly Google and Facebook. In economic terms, Soros said, they were making excessive profits, crushing competitors and stifling innovation. But they were also harming individuals and democracy. Social media companies “deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide”, he said; they “influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it”. And it was only a matter…

My son James Bulger Denise Fergus was a cautious young mother. When she went out with her two-year-old son, she kept him in a buggy. But on 12 February 1993, he was on foot – and for a second in a butcher’s shop, she let go of his hand. In that moment, says Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian, James Bulger was abducted by two ten-year-old boys, who tortured him to death and left his body on a railway line. Twenty-five years on, Fergus has written a book, entitled I Let Him Go. In it, she reveals that she was haunted by two thoughts: that James was calling for her at the end – and that if only she’d held on to his hand, or looked the other way when she…

Villagers in rural India were thrilled when a mysterious blue rock fell from the sky, thinking it was a meteorite. Some residents of Fazilpur Badli chopped off sections of the 26lb lump as souvenirs. But officials instead suspect that it is in fact “blue ice”: human waste mixed with disinfectant and dropped from a passing aeroplane. “Villagers who kept it inside their refrigerators,” said one resident, “are now busy cleaning their houses.” An 18th century mummy dug up 40 years ago in a Swiss church is, it transpires, the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother of Boris Johnson. The body was unearthed in 1975 during renovations on Basel’s Barfüsser Church. Historical research and DNA analysis has revealed that it is the remains of Anna Catharina Bischoff, a direct ancestor of Johnson’s. Her body was…

MEXICO Adrift in a stormy sea of troubles The New York Times Mexico is set to be buffeted by a “perfect storm” this year, says Jorge G. Castañeda. A series of looming threats are on the horizon. One of them is President Trump’s recent package of tax reforms, which was designed partly to dissuade American firms from investing in Mexico. With the US corporate tax rate now at 21% (compared to 30% in Mexico), many US companies will be tempted to repatriate jobs and money from Mexico, while some Mexican multinationals might relocate north of the border. Another factor that will deter foreign investment in Mexico this year is the uncertainty surrounding the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Trump has threatened to walk away from it,…

The man behind the Mars One mission to send humans on a one-way trip to the Red Planet is about to start recruiting his first interplanetary colonisers. Bas Lansdorp’s idea is that people will start travelling to Mars in 2031, with a view to creating a permanent human settlement. Some 200,000 people have applied for the mission, and the selection process for the first four-person team begins this year, with a barrage of psychological tests to determine whether they can handle the enormity of the challenge. Conditions will be harsh: the first crew will be out there alone; they will be confined to cramped, pod-like units indefinitely; and their water will be so limited, they likely won’t be able to shower for two years. But all that, Lansdorp told The…

Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue is out, and as usual it features a host of cover stars (pictured). But this year’s photo shoot prompted ridicule when eagle-eyed social media users noticed that in two of the group images, stars appeared to have superfluous body parts. The stars in question took it in good part. Reese Witherspoon tweeted: “Well… I guess everybody knows now… I have three legs. I hope you can still accept me for who I am.” Oprah Winfrey replied: “I accept your third leg. As I know you accept my third hand.” Vanity Fair conceded that Oprah’s extra hand was an editing mistake, but said Witherspoon’s extra limb was a visual trick caused by the lining of her dress. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson confessed last week to stealing…

“Whoever scatters thorns should not go around shoeless.” Neapolitan mafioso, quoted in The Times “We are never so generous as when giving advice.” François de La Rochefoucauld, quoted on The Browser “Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.” Anthony Eden, quoted in Forbes “Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” Eric Hoffer, quoted in The Baltimore Sun “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” Douglas Adams, quoted in The Washington Post “It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.” Muriel Spark, quoted in The New York Times “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” Martin Luther King Jr., ibid “Gentlemen’s clubs are for men who prefer armchairs to women.”…

Football Manchester City bought French defender Aymeric Laporte from Athletic Bilbao for £57m – a club record. Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge joined West Bromwich Albion on loan. Golf Chinese golfer Li Haotong won the Dubai Desert Classic, finishing one shot ahead of Rory McIlroy. Cricket In the auction for the Indian Premier League, Rajasthan Royals bought Ben Stokes for almost £1.4m. Chris Woakes was sold to Royal Challengers Bangalore for £820,000. Joe Root and Eoin Morgan went unsold.…

When it came out in December, The Greatest Showman was dismissed by critics as unbearably cheesy. And it flopped horribly on its first weekend, making back just a tiny fraction of its $84m budget. Yet almost unbelievably, this old-fashioned musical about the life of the 19th century impresario P.T. Barnum has turned into “one of cinema’s greatest success stories”, said David Sanderson in The Times. Its soundtrack has topped the US Billboard chart and the film has grossed a whopping $260m. The explanation, or part of it, can be summed up in a word: “singalong”. Someone had the bright idea of organising screenings where the lyrics to the upbeat songs appear as subtitles, enticing audiences to give voice, and ever since fans have been flocking to join in the fun.…

New cars: what the critics say Autocar Diesel cars have been on the receiving end of a “barrage of negative publicity” about their environmental impact. Yet they continue to “roll off the production line” and people are still buying them. The diesel models of Jaguar’s first compact SUV, the E-Pace, are expected to outsell the petrol models by three to one – because “effortless diesel clout” suits this kind of car very well indeed. Evo From the outside, at least, the E-Pace looks “just right”: it’s among the more handsome cars of this type. It’s “attractively styled” inside, too, with a 10in infotainment system in all models, but after a while you start to notice an excess of shiny plastic. Still, there’s a comfortable driving position and – despite the…

Waterstones: sold to a hedge fund? The last time Britain’s best-known bookseller changed hands was in 2011, when the Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut snapped it up from an ailing HMV, said Mark Kleinman on Sky News online. Now Waterstones looks to be back on the block. Elliott Advisors, the UK arm of Paul Singer’s New York hedge-fund empire, is reportedly in talks to buy the bookseller, and has been granted “a short period of exclusivity” in which to do a deal before “a number of other potential private-equity buyers” are let off the leash. After its near-death experience at the start of the decade, Waterstones has been on a roll after a turnaround engineered by managing director James Daunt (founder of the Daunt Books chain) in the teeth of rising…

May must stop the kowtowing to China Jeremy Warner The Daily Telegraph “What does Theresa May hope to achieve from her trade mission to China,” asks Jeremy Warner. “There will certainly be contracts aplenty, some of them possibly genuinely new ones.” But what is her overall purpose there? Does she back President Trump’s complaint that the Chinese abuse the rules of fair trade, or is she “merely on the scrounge” for potential windfalls? Britain’s recent policy might be described as the great “kowtow”: we’ve opened up the City to renminbi trading, backed China’s efforts to form Asian alternatives to the World Bank and the IMF, and ceded control of our nuclear energy industry. Yet the payback “has been far from obvious”. Trump’s gripes seem “more than justified”: Beijing “talks free…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys Anpario The Daily Telegraph Anpario provides “high-performance natural feed additives for animal health” and is growing strongly, especially overseas. With a strong balance sheet and high margins, it deserves its premium rating. Buy. 440p. Crest Nicholson Investors Chronicle Given the chronic imbalance between supply and demand, this housebuilder is well set to≈achieve further growth. Completions are growing, selling prices are rising and forward sales are ahead. Yields 6.3%. Buy. 522p. Paragon Banking Group The Times This buy-to-let lender’s mortgage business is increasing market share amid tighter regulation; it’s also expanding into mainstream retail banking services, second-hand car loans and asset finance. Buy. 504p. Satellite Solutions Worldwide The Times SSW rents broadband capacity from satellites and beams signals to remote households in Europe and…

“‘I would give anything to be back out there. I didn’t realise until these past few months just how much I love this game,’ said Murray” Sport is cruel even to its champions. Andy Murray knew this when he left home at the age of 15 to train in Spain. He knew it in his greatest triumph, when he won his first Wimbledon singles title in 2013. And he knows it now as he faces what might be the end of his career, aged 30. He hasn’t played competitive tennis since Wimbledon last year, when he was beaten over five sets by the American Sam Querrey. He attempted to come back for the US Open, the last grand slam tournament of the year, but had to pull out before the…

Dublin Abortion vote: Ireland’s government has resolved to hold a historic referendum on whether the country’s 35-year-old constitutional ban on abortion should be repealed. Prime Minster Leo Varadkar also confirmed that if a majority vote for a repeal, his administration will introduce a bill to allow unrestricted access to abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy, and later in cases of rape, incest or foetal abnormality. The Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution, introduced in 1983, enshrines the equal right to life of both the pregnant woman and the unborn child – in effect banning terminations. And while the complete ban on abortion was lifted in 2013, it is still only permitted when the woman’s life is in danger; not in cases of rape, incest or abnormality. Given the…

They’re hard to spot among the “insults and bombast”, said The New York Times, “but every now and then President Trump emits a sensible idea”. There was the appearance of one last week when he declared that he was open to offering a path to citizenship for the “Dreamers”. These are the 690,000 immigrants who were brought to the US illegally as children and who were granted temporary protection from deportation by Barack Obama under a scheme since cancelled by Trump. The president’s words heartened Democrats – until they heard his price. In return, the White House wants an extra $25bn for border security and an end to the diversity visa lottery (which allots 50,000 green cards a year to applicants from eligible countries). It also wants to curtail what…

Four in five obese children in the UK will remain dangerously overweight in adulthood – which could lead to them losing up to 20 years of healthy life, a new report has warned. The report, from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, urges the Government to break a “terrible destructive cycle” by, for instance, introducing measures to stop fast food shops opening near schools, and banning junk food ads from being shown on TV before the 9pm watershed. One in three children are overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school, official statistics show. Separately, a study in the US has suggested that the behaviours that lead to obesity are “contagious”. Researchers looked at data gathered from US military bases and found that when families move…

“First drafts of history are sometimes wrong,” said Oliver Wiseman on CapX. After Theresa May lost her majority last June, one explanation was soon widely agreed upon: that Jeremy Corbyn had mobilised large numbers of young people, who had never voted before, to turn out in droves for Labour. There was even a word for it, “youthquake”, which Oxford Dictionaries declared their word of the year. The trouble is, it “never actually happened”. According to the authoritative British Election Study, there was in fact no meaningful increase in turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds; it may even have fallen. (That age group’s estimated turnout was 43.1%, compared to 82.8% among 65- to 74-year-olds.) The whole theory was based on flawed polls and on anecdote: Corbyn often surrounded himself with young people,…

Tennis: Federer joins the 20 club At the start of 2017, Roger Federer was thought to be “not only past his prime but past the period when he was past his prime”, said Tom Fordyce on BBC Sport online. Five years had passed since his last grand slam title; he had just returned from six months out, after knee surgery. So when he won the Australian Open title a year ago, it was hailed as “one final reminder of what had once been”. How wrong we were. In July, Federer went on to regain his Wimbledon crown without dropping a set – and on Sunday, at the age of 36, he beat Marin Cilic again to win the Australian Open. This is no “echo of past glories”; it’s a “second…

Listen to small firms To The Sunday Telegraph The CBI wants Britain to remain in the EU customs union. This organisation once urged us to join the eurozone and to remain in a “reformed” EU. It was wrong on those occasions – and it is wrong now. Staying in the customs union would mean continuing to pay through the nose for imports from beyond the EU, and probably remaining under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Of course the EU does have attractions for big companies: wage compression, scope for tax avoidance between EU countries, and lobbying opportunities in Brussels. However, in 2017 there were 5.7 million small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Britain, representing over 99% of all businesses and employing over 16 million people. Why…

Theatre Mary Stuart Playwright: Friedrich Schiller Director: Robert Icke Duke of York’s Theatre, St Martin’s Lane, London WC2 (0844-871 7623) Until 31 March; then touring to Bath, Salford and Cambridge Running time: 3hrs 5mins (including interval) ★★★★ “Casting decisions do not usually make gripping theatre,” said Jenny Gilbert on The Arts Desk. But in Robert Icke’s version of Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 political thriller, which has transferred to the West End following an acclaimed 2016 run at the Almeida, the question of who will play Mary, Queen of Scots – and who her nemesis, Elizabeth of England – is “an edge-of-the-seat moment night after night”. Two great actresses, Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams, each stand ready at every performance to perform either role. And with the entire cast assembled on stage…

Exhibition of the week Charles I: King and Collector Royal Academy, London W1 (020-7300 8090, www.royalacademy.org.uk ). Until 15 April Charles I was an intransigent autocrat who plunged Britain into civil war and became the only English monarch to be executed by his people, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. It’s fair to describe him as a king who “got just about everything wrong” – everything, that is, except for collecting art. Over the course of his reign, Charles spent a fortune amassing masterpieces by the likes of Raphael, Rembrandt and Veronese, not to mention a wealth of commissions by Van Dyck, his court painter. Yet after the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell’s regime sold them all off, dispersing the collection across the Continent. Now, at the…

Albert’s Schloss 27 Peter Street, Manchester (0161-833 4040) If I hadn’t tasted its food I would have dismissed Albert’s Schloss as “Dante’s third circle of hell, only with less glamour”, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. This barn of a place – all faux wooden panelling and Germanic shtick – “has beer taps like the cockpit of a 747 has switches” and music so loud “it could dislodge a filling”. And when things really get going, it has drag queens to lead diners in bench-top dances. None of that is quite my cup of tea. But the heavenly grub definitely is. Schweinshaxe is a “monumental plateful” of long-roasted pork knuckle with crisp crackling, rich gravy and superb red cabbage. There’s a peppery bratwurst with nicely acidic potato salad and…

Jamie Dimon “How do you run for president? Insist that you’re not,” said Quartz. Everyone in Davos was convinced that the JP Morgan boss, Jamie Dimon, was “considering a 2020 run” as a Democrat when he told “a standing-room-only crowd” that “he thought he’d be good at it” – but wasn’t going to stand. He wasn’t actually bluffing. Wall Street’s longest-serving CEO has just announced plans to stay on at the investment bank for another five years. By the time Dimon, 61, comes to review his decision again in 2023, “he will have served 17 years” in charge, said the FT. “They’ll take him out in a coffin,” quips one rival banker. The veteran banker “is popular with investors”, who welcomed the decision, and with staff. But his “longevity” may…