Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1171 i The Week

What happened Poison gas in Syria Russia and the US moved closer to direct confrontation this week when Donald Trump warned Syria and its Russian allies there would be a “big price to pay” for a suspected chemical attack on Syrian citizens that left at least 48 dead. The president said all options were “on the table” for punishing the “heinous” use of chemical weapons – allegedly chlorine and sarin – in the rebel-held town of Douma in Eastern Ghouta, close to Damascus. Footage posted by opposition groups showed the bodies of men, women and children, some foaming at the mouth. However, at a meeting of the UN Security Council this week, Russia claimed the attack was a “fabrication” staged by the rebels. Britain and France joined the US for…

Welby’s path to God It was never Justin Welby’s ambition to go into the Church. In fact, he didn’t particularly want to be a Christian, says Rachel Cooke in The Observer. At Cambridge, he answered God’s call “kicking and screaming”. His faith grew but, even so, he went into the oil industry, where he worked happily for many years; then, in the late 1980s, he began to get the “horrifying” feeling that he was being called to the priesthood. During his discernment process, when asked why he wanted to be ordained, he replied: “Well, I don’t really.” And what would he do if he was turned down? “I’ll go back to London and take my wife for the most expensive meal I can afford, to celebrate,” he added. But the…

Huge crowds recently gathered in the village of Harpur, in India’s Bihar state, to watch a holy man pull a car along with his penis. The man, known only as Penis Baba, can be seen in a video fiddling under his robes and apparently attaching a tow rope to his private parts, before staggering backwards and seeming to pull the heavy vehicle some 100ft. Baba, who reportedly left the village as a child to practise penance, remarked: “It is not art. It is the power of God – the power of devotion.” The Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg has been accused by The Beano of copying the “trademarked imagery” of one of its best-known characters, Walter the Softy (pictured). Beano sent a “cease and desist” letter to the MP, claiming that…

Caffeine: no boost for one in ten Downing an espresso is supposed to boost energy levels, but for around one in ten people, it may have the opposite effect. Some years ago, scientists discovered that variations in a specific gene control the way the body metabolises coffee. People with two copies of this variant (about 50% of the population) are “fast” metabolisers: coffee gives them a jolt, and then it’s gone. Some 40% have one copy and are “moderate” metabolisers. The rest are “slow” metabolisers. This means the drug lingers longer in the body – and that appears to have consequences. In 2006, a team from the University of Toronto found that slow metabolisers who drink a lot of coffee are more likely to suffer heart attacks than faster metabolisers;…

The fashion world has been reeling from rumours that Anna Wintour, the longtime editor of US Vogue, is planning to stand down after the September issue. Publisher Condé Nast has flatly denied the story, but that has not stopped fashion pundits trying to imagine what the world would look like if Wintour – one of the industry’s most influential, and formidable, figures – did leave the post she has held for the past 30 years. As David Carr once put it in The New York Times: “She does not put a finger in the wind to judge trends: she is the wind.” Russell Crowe has raised £2m to fund his divorce, by auctioning off a trove of his personal possessions and movie memorabilia. Many of the lots in “The Art…

Who was responsible for the attack in Salisbury? The theories put forward by Moscow have been so “irreverent and numerous”, it’s as though they’re throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks, said Andrew Roth in The Guardian. The nerve agent deployed against Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia was made in Sweden; British secret services orchestrated the attack. How did we know there was an attack, a Russian MP asked last week; while at the UN, its ambassador zeroed in on the fate of the former double agent’s pets. Were the bodies of these “important witnesses” (two guinea pigs and a cat that starved while Skripal’s house was sealed up) destroyed as part of a cover-up? This is what the Russians do when found out, said the FT:…

“So, this is the thing with Pep Guardiola’s philosophy,” said Ian Ladyman in the Daily Mail. The Manchester City manager has a “special” approach to football. “But when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong.” We’ve seen that twice in the past fortnight when, for the first time in Guardiola’s coaching career, his team conceded three goals in two consecutive matches. First, last Wednesday, City were hammered 3-0 by Liverpool in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals; then, on Saturday, their arch-rivals Manchester United came back from two goals down to defeat them 3-2. Victory over United would have secured the Premier League title with a record six matches to spare – instead, City must wait until this weekend at the very earliest. And on Tuesday, in the…

Formula One Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel won the Bahrain Grand Prix. He has a 17-point championship lead over Lewis Hamilton, who came third. Commonwealth Games English swimmer Adam Peaty won gold in the men’s 100m breaststroke and silver in the 50m. South Africa’s Akani Simbine won the men’s 100m gold; and Trinidad and Tobago’s Michelle-Lee Ahye triumphed in the women’s race. Rugby union Saracens scored nine tries in their 63-13 win over Northampton. Exeter beat Gloucester 46-10.…

Restaurant Sat Bains Lenton Lane, Nottingham (0115-986 6566) I cannot understand why Sat Bains has only two Michelin stars, says Tom Parker Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. Every dish we eat at his restaurant is evidence of a “truly great chef with a brilliant brigade, all cooking at the peak of their powers”. And to make it even better, there is no “avant-garde tomfoolery” or guff about “stories” and “journeys” here – just absolute dedication to perfection. An Isle of Skye scallop, lavishly caramelised and yet perfectly pearlescent, is served with wobbling wafers of braised pig’s trotter and lentils, and scented with a “whisper” of garam masala. Sweetbread, gently poached, comes as burnished spheres filled with garlic butter. This is “God’s own version of chicken Kiev” – an…

Auto Express A strong new entrant into the market for small premium SUVs, the XC40 is noticeably more youthful than its Volvo stablemates, and strikes a nice blend of comfort and “cruising refinement”. Outside, it looks both chunky and cute, while the interior is full of nice touches, such as (optional) boot dividers to stop your shopping rolling around and, at the higher specs, leather upholstery and heated seats. The Sunday Times This car looks so terrific that its rivals seem “half-baked” in comparison. It’s distinctive without being contrived, and minimalist without being stark; even the most basic model boasts a state-of-the-art touchscreen with “slick” virtual instruments. Dense and tough in the best Volvo tradition, the XC40 isn’t exactly sporty, but it’s “perfectly pleasant” to drive – firm, comfortable and…

“She was tortured; her food was served on the unrinsed lid of a sanitary bin; and she slept on the floor of a 10ft x 5ft cell” The “Queen of Africa”: fearless, ruthless and defiant Winnie Madikizela-Mandela 1936-2018 “Rarely can there have been someone who was called to greatness and yet failed that calling as decisively as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela,” said The Guardian. One of the defining figures of the anti-apartheid struggle, she showed extraordinary levels of courage in the face of unspeakable brutality and vicious injustice. She became known as the “Mother of the Nation”, and the “Queen of Africa”. But by the time of her death last week aged 81, “she was neither, her reputation irrevocably mired in murder and fraud”. Born in the Eastern Cape in 1936, Nomzamo…

Following a two-week board battle and three years of growing losses, Germany’s troubled biggest bank has ditched its Yorkshire-born chief, John Cryan, for a homegrown German alternative “steeped in auditing, risk control and retail banking”, said Jenny Strasburg in The Wall Street Journal. The elevation of Christian Sewing, who joined Deutsche Bank as an apprentice in 1989, signals a “humbler” and more “regionally focused” future for Deutsche after years of “sputtering attempts to regain a spot among global investment-bank powerhouses”. “And just like that, the most tortuous tenure in high finance is over,” said Thornton McEnery on Dealbreakercom.. Appointed to revive the crisis-racked bank in 2015, Cryan has instead presided over a catastrophic loss of value – shares have roughly halved on his watch – with admirable stoicism. As well…

Elon Musk “Half a million frustrated would-be Tesla Model 3 owners” have got used to the electric carmaker missing production targets, says Danny Fortson in The Sunday Times. But investors still believe in founder Elon Musk. Following “a cascade of bad news” including a fatal accident, a credit downgrade and an ill-judged April Fool about bankruptcy, shares in the “deeply loss-making” firm (valued more highly than Ford) were expected to take a drubbing last week. But, hey presto, they jumped. Backers cite the promise of Tesla’s battery and artificial intelligence tech. But “more than any company on the planet”, Tesla relies upon faith in its “brilliant but quixotic founder”. Musk is once again sleeping at the company’s plant, to iron out production issues. As he recently tweeted: “Car biz is…

Neumünster, Germany Puigdemont freed: The former Catalan leader, Carles Puigdemont (pictured), has been freed on bail from prison in the German town of Neumünster. A German state court ruled that he cannot be extradited to Spain for trial on “rebellion” charges, since there was no “evidence of violence” – a necessary condition for the equivalent charge in German law. He could still face extradition on the less serious charge of misusing public funds (by holding Catalonia’s independence referendum). However, Germany’s justice minister has noted that proving that charge “won’t be easy”. Some Spanish politicians expressed fury at the failure to extradite him, but PM Mariano Rajoy said his government respected the decision. Nantes, France Show of force: French authorities deployed bulldozers, tear gas and 2,500 riot police on Monday to…

Bowhead whales are the jazz musicians of the animal world, keeping up a 24-hour stream of intricate and ever-varying songs during their long winter breeding season, scientists have discovered. Over four winters, researchers recorded a colony of some 200 whales as they swam under the ice off the east coast of Greenland. During this time, they counted 184 distinct melodies. Each season brought a new set of songs, and no songs were repeated between years. Humpbacks are the only other whale species known to sing complex songs, but their music, though melodious, is different. “If humpback whale song is like classical music, bowheads are jazz,” said research leader Dr Kate Stafford, from the University of Washington. “Their sound is more free-form.” Because bowhead whales – which can live for more…

Hashem Zakout was meant to be volunteering at his local hospital in Gaza last weekend, said Donald Macintyre in The Observer. Instead, the 24-year-old ended up in casualty himself, after being shot in the knee while throwing stones at Israeli troops across the border. He is one of hundreds of Gazans to have been wounded since the launch last month of a six-week border protest known as the “Great Return March”. The protests are designed to raise awareness of the harshness of life in the coastal enclave, and to support Gazans’ demands to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. Zakout is among the luckier protesters. More than 30 others have been killed by Israeli snipers, among them a 14-year-old boy and a Palestinian video journalist. The…

It was a remarkable scene, said Patrick Sawer in The Daily Telegraph. In 2011, viewers of the BBC’s Human Planet watched agog as the Korowai people of West Papua, Indonesia, built a tree house, way up in the forest canopy, for a family to use as their home. Up and up the tribespeople climbed while, in a voice-over, Sir John Hurt marvelled at the daily effort required to carry babies, supplies and even pets to this shack, balancing precariously 115ft above the ground. It made for extraordinary television. There was just one problem: the sequence was staged. When another BBC team recently returned to the region, and asked after the tree house, they were told that no one has ever lived in it: the Korowai said they’d been “commissioned” to…

They say that everyone loves a winner, said Alasdair Reid in The Times. But at the Masters last weekend, that wasn’t quite the case. Few champions can ever have been “treated as frostily” as Patrick Reed was in Augusta: when the 27-year-old American dropped shots, the crowd gave off a “sense of quiet satisfaction”. Yet despite his errors over the final 18 holes, when he failed to break par once, he hung on to win his first major. It was just reward for his “crushing performance” earlier in the tournament, when he scored under 70 in each of the first three rounds. And it was all the more impressive considering Reed had never finished higher than 22nd at the Masters; last year, he didn’t even make the cut. Although Reed’s…

A pay conundrum To The Times Your article on gender pay speculates whether women are paid less because they opt for certain jobs, or if these jobs pay less because women opt for them. I was intrigued to discover, when doing research in this area in the 1970s and 1980s, that women made up only 6% of the high-paid, high-status medical profession in the US. In the USSR, by contrast, where doctors had roughly the same pay and status as bus drivers, 75% of doctors were women. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Dr Elizabeth Vallance, London SWI Man’s Hour To The Times Given the recent discussions about gender equality, what signals does Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour programme send about the supposed availability of women to listen at…

Theatre The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich Playwright: Mary Pix Director: Jo Davies Swan Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon (01789-403493). Until 14 June Running time: 2hrs 40mins (including interval) ★★★ This sparkling Restoration comedy, originally named The Beau Defeated, was written in 1700 by Mary Pix, a name now unjustly forgotten, said Ann Treneman in The Times. Hearty congratulations are due to the RSC for excavating her “hoot” of a play and glamming it up “with endless frou-frou and fripperies”. The main plot concerns the machinations of a wealthy widow, Mrs Rich, as she schemes to marry her way into the aristocracy. The bubbling themes are (of course) status, power, money and sex – and the stage “buzzes with entrances and exits” from a host of characters all hovering amusingly on the…

Best books… Rose Tremain The acclaimed novelist Rose Tremain picks her favourite books. She is talking about her memoir, Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life, on 28 April at the Stratford Literary Festival (www.stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk) The Diaries of Samuel Pepys ed. Robert Latham (Penguin £18.99). The most entertaining and honest picture of an age (1660s London) that has ever been written. Pepys, like a shape-shifting sprite, pops up in a thousand different places, from the Navy Office to the privies of his detested neighbours. His description of the Great Fire of London has never been surpassed. Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac, 1833 (Vintage £7.99). A heartbreaking story about a father and daughter, living in France after the Napoleonic Wars. A hoarder of gold, who forces his family to live a…

Adding the sweetness of dried fruit to the depth and richness of kid meat results in a dish that is one of the greats of world food, says James Whetlor. I always have a jar of ras-el-hanout in the kitchen – it’s a really useful seasoning. You could use 800g of diced kid here in place of the shanks, if you prefer. Serve with harissa and couscous. Kid shank, apricot and pistachio tagine Serves 4 4kid shanks 2 tomatoes, roughly chopped 2 onions, finely chopped 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped 60g butter, melted 1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and ground 2 tsps ras-el-hanout spice blend ½ tsp ground turmeric 400ml stock or water 10 saffron strands, soaked in warm water for 10 minutes small bunch of coriander, leaves chopped, stalks…

The List of Real Things Sarah Moore Fitzgerald’s poignant but funny tale of a 14-year-old girl trying to cope with her younger sister’s fantasies after the death of their parents. For readers aged 11 and over (£6.99; Orion). Robinson Peter Sís’s version of Robinson Crusoe for four to sixes explores themes of imagination, bullying and friendship, and has gorgeous jungly pictures and maps (£12.95; Thames & Hudson). Song of the Dolphin Boy Splendidly illustrated by Peter Bailey, Elizabeth Laird’s story for children aged six to eight is about a Scottish boy whose dolphin friends are threatened by pollution (£6.99; Macmillan). Big Dog, Little Dog For children aged three and under, this lift-the-flap book by élo brims with comic collage animals that undergo ingenious transformations (£8.99; Walker Studio). Whoever You Are…

WPP: Sorrell cornered In every crisis there is opportunity, and investors in WPP have lost no time demanding “sweeping” changes at the world’s biggest advertising conglomerate, said Simon Duke in The Sunday Times. Sir Martin Sorrell, who built the group from scratch, is under internal investigation for alleged “personal misconduct” – and faces “mounting pressure” to offload the group’s £3.5bn market research business. Big shareholders also want “a clear succession plan”. Even if Sorrell, 73, is exonerated, “his days as the king of Adland may be numbered” amid talk that the group, comprising “hundreds of ad, marketing and PR agencies”, could be broken up. Sorrell, who “unreservedly” denies claims made by a whistle-blower that he misused company funds, “believes the allegations were deliberately leaked by directors to force him out”.…

The week’s best buys Arbuthnot Banking Group Investors Chronicle The bank’s commercial division has gone from “strength to strength”: deposits are up 500%; the loan book has trebled; and the private arm has written £201m in new business. Buy. £13.20. Breedon Group Investors Chronicle The UK’s largest construction materials group owns around 60 quarries, 26 asphalt plants, 200 concrete plants and substantial mineral reserves. There’s strong demand, and organic growth is being boosted by acquisitions. Buy. 80p. Electrocomponents The Times Thanks to cost cutting and improved customer service, the electronics distributor has revealed strong revenue growth with good margins. With scope for a dividend rise or M&A, the outlook is positive. Buy. 598.5p. NetApp The Daily Telegraph This US data storage specialist has “dynamic new management” and unique software designed…

Norristown, Pennsylvania Cosby retrial: The retrial began this week of Bill Cosby, who is accused of drugging and sexually molesting Andrea Constand, 45, in 2004. The first trial collapsed last June, when the jury failed to reach a verdict. At the new trial, the judge is allowing evidence from five other women who have made similar claims against Cosby (only one was allowed to testify last time). On the first day of the trial, it emerged that Cosby paid $3.4m to Constand to settle a civil suit in 2006. On his arrival at court, Cosby faced a protest by Nicolle Rochelle (pictured), a former actress who appeared on The Cosby Show. Mountain View, California Google staff protest: More than 3,000 Google staff have signed a letter of protest to its…

The EU’s rules are designed to aid Germany... Larry Elliott The Guardian £135 billion. That’s the latest figure for Britain’s annual trade deficit, says Larry Elliott. It’s a huge sum and one, alas, that is steadily growing. Of course, many factors lie behind this trend, but a big one that’s often overlooked is our membership of the EU. Why? Because its trading arrangements were designed to suit other countries, not us. Brussels has put its energies into sweeping away barriers to a free trade in goods – a boon to a manufacturing nation like Germany – but not in services, which is our strong suit. So even though we now sell more to the rest of the world than we buy from it (a surplus that has increased fivefold since…

The number of plastic bags littering British seas has fallen sharply, suggesting that making retailers charge for them is working, reports The Times. The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science analysed almost 2,500 research trawls carried out around the UK in the past 25 years and found that, since 2010, the likelihood of nets bringing up plastic bags has more than halved. Wales introduced its charge in 2011, Northern Ireland followed suit in 2013, Scotland in 2014 and England in 2015. Since then, the number of plastic bags issued by big retailers in England has fallen by 80% – equivalent to six billion bags a year. Yet the report’s findings highlight the fact that bags are only part of the problem: there has been no change in the volume…

“It is easy to set up a political party,” said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. You just have to register with the Electoral Commission and raise enough cash to fund deposits for your candidates. In the first three months of this year, 35 new political outfits were formed, including the Aspire party, Save Us Now and the Psychedelic Future Party. What’s harder “is creating a new party with the potential to get to power”: since 1900, only one new entrant – Labour – has gone on to govern the UK. But many would argue that, today, conditions are ripe for a new political movement, said Michael Savage in the same paper. And it emerged this week that one is being set up by a network of entrepreneurs and philanthropists keen…

“A neurosis is a secret you don’t know you’re keeping.” Kenneth Tynan, quoted in The Observer “We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.” French philosopher Jean de La Bruyère, quoted on The Browser “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.” Astronaut and businessman Frank Borman, quoted in Forbes “If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims, though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.” Arthur Koestler, quoted in The Independent “The role of mythology is to shield us from history.” Sylvie Laurent in Le Monde Diplomatique “A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff nature replaces it with.” Tennessee Williams, quoted in the Portland (Maine) Press Herald “No matter…

The Commonwealth Games are always a rather unusual tournament, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. They stand out for their “eclecticism”, with stars competing alongside “have-ago heroes”. A notable example of the latter is Bernard Chase, a 63-year-old dreadlocked grandfather from Barbados. He suffered a heart attack last year – but competed in the shooting nonetheless, despite having glaucoma. And one of the “darlings” of the tournament is Anna Hursey, an 11-year-old who has found “a novel way of spending the school holidays”: she played a key role in the Welsh table-tennis team that made it to the quarter-finals. It’s in lawn bowls, above all, that underdogs have thrived, said Ben Bloom in The Daily Telegraph. The Cook Islands (population: 17,000) took bronze in the mens’ pairs bowling – the…

To The Guardian Syria is smashed, its cities in rubble, half its population displaced, and to bring this about Bashar al-Assad has had to mortgage his country’s independence to Russia and Iran. And Turkey is helping itself to a new security belt in the north. Assad has failed his country and people, and should be held accountable for this and his myriad crimes. Merely pointing the finger at Western failures in Syria misses the full picture. No country and no actor comes out of this hell with any credit at all. Moreover, the most damaging external interventions in Syria in terms of destruction and killing were non-Western, those of Russia, Iran, Turkey and Islamic State. The Gulf states ran a largely inept proxy war as well. The question now is,…

A Quiet Place Dir: John Krasinski 1hr 30mins (15) Keep quiet and you’ll live ★★★★ “You’ll need a lie down after this,” said Ed Potton in The Times. Starring Emily Blunt and directed by her husband, John Krasinski, this gripping movie is set in a world overrun by ravenous aliens who respond only to sound. Keep quiet and you’ll live – a devastatingly simple premise that makes for “the scariest film I’ve seen in years”. Blunt and Krasinski excel as Evelyn and Lee, parents eking out a living with their children in the woods, but the standout performer is Millicent Simmonds, a hearing-impaired actor who plays their deaf daughter, said Kim Newman in Empire. Thanks to her, the family know sign language, which has helped them to survive. Some scenes…

Tips of the week… how to beat internet snoops ● Download all the data Google has on you using its Takeout tool; you can then delete it. Do this with Maps in particular, unless you want your movements known. ● To stop Facebook advertisers targeting you, go to Settings, then select Ads on the left of your screen, click on “Ads on apps and websites off of the Facebook Companies” and select No. ● To check whether your email has been compromised, enter your address at haveibeenpwned.com. If the answer is yes, change your password: the longer it is, the more secure it will be. ● Little-used email accounts are a gift to hackers. Either delete them or change the password and enable two-step verification. Disconnect linked services such as…

Markets spent the week see-sawing amid rising geopolitical worries. US stocks climbed on Tuesday as investor concerns about trade tensions between the US and China eased after President Xi promised to cut import tariffs and urged dialogue. But a wave of further losses was triggered after President Trump warned Russia to “get ready” for US missiles in Syria. The US decision to apply further sanctions to Russian individuals and companies saw billions wiped off the value of stocks in Moscow and other centres like London. The rouble suffered its worst one-day fall for over two years, amid concerns about the Russian economy. Shares in Tesco jumped after the supermarket rewarded patient investors with the group’s first annual dividend since 2014, in defiance of the gloom elsewhere on the high street…

Facebook can’t be trusted to police itself Jennifer Saba Reuters Breakingviews Senators grilling Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg this week got straight to the crux of the matter, says Jennifer Saba. Facebook’s business model depends almost entirely on advertising. In exchange for allowing consumers to use the social network for free, it mines information to sell to brands – and it gets by far “the better end” of the deal. Furthermore, “confusing terms of service” obscure the true nature of the agreement. Facebook does provide tools that let members control who they share their data with, yet “effectively deploying them is not an easy task”. Even Zuckerberg accepts that the average person rarely understands the terms of service, but he essentially defended the status quo. He said he’d be open to…