Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1194 i The Week

What happened The Salzburg summit Theresa May sought to garner support for her Brexit plan this week at a summit of EU leaders in Salzburg. The informal gathering was expected to generate warm words, but little in the way of substantive progress. Withdrawal talks remain at an impasse over the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The EU has proposed a backstop plan, under which, if no other arrangement is found to avert a hard border on the island, Northern Ireland would effectively remain in the EU’s customs union after Brexit. May says that that would threaten the UK’s constitutional integrity. She has proposed a rival backstop, rejected by Brussels, under which the entire UK would remain aligned with the EU customs union for a…

Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire, after a British diver launched a defamation suit against him. Musk had referred to Vernon Unsworth, who helped rescue the boys trapped in a Thai cave this year, as a “pedo guy”, after Unsworth publicly dismissed his offers of help as a stunt. Musk apologised for his outburst, but months later, returned to the fray, saying it was “strange” that Unsworth had not sued him, and claiming that he lived in Thailand with “a child bride”. Vernon’s partner is 40. Britain’s rail network, with a new report showing that in the 12 months to August more than a million trains, one in seven of the total, arrived late (defined as five minutes or more after its scheduled time, or ten minutes in the case of…

52% of Britons would now consider voting for a new centre-ground party at the next general election, up from 43% in April. 25% said they would not, down from 34%. A third of voters would support Labour splitting up as a party, including a third of those who backed Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 general election. BMG/The Independent 40% of UK voters feel that welcoming immigrants from a wide variety of backgrounds has undermined British culture. Half want to reduce the flow of low-skilled workers from the EU. ICM/The Guardian 32% of 13- to 17-year-olds in the US say their favourite way to talk to friends is in person. In 2012, 49% did. Common Sense Media/ The Times…

Football’s unlikely star Peter Crouch isn’t like other footballers, says Ben Machell in The Times. There’s his build, for a start: he’s 6ft 7in, and rake-thin. Early on, it made him a target for abuse from fans who’d scream that he was a “freak”, and greet him with chants of: “Does the circus know you’re here?” (Even now, strangers feel moved to come up and tell him how tall he is, as though he might not have noticed.) It is one reason he has always felt a bit detached from the gaudy world of Premiership football. But he was briefly sucked in. He recalls the moment: he’s 24, and has just bought a sports car, which he cruises around in – windows down, shades on, music blaring. “A little voice…

When did this controversy arise? For the first 200 years after Shakespeare’s death in 1616, no one expressed doubt about his authorship. But by the mid-19th century, when he was established as England’s national poet and a unique genius, people began to have trouble squaring his great works with what the historical record showed: that Shakespeare was the son of a glove-maker from Stratford-upon-Avon, an actor and theatre manager who hadn’t attended university. He was at best a shrewd businessman, at worst a grasping money-lender and grain-hoarder, whose will featured a scrawled signature and mentioned his wife, Anne, only to leave her his “second best bed”. So what was proposed instead? In the 1840s, the theory was put forward for the first time: someone else had written Shakespeare’s works. The…

Nearly £1,000 worth of pennies has been stolen from an artwork in Cambridge: the artist Anna Brownsted put the 1p pieces, weighing 57.5 stone, in a water feature for an installation called Pence Sterling. Thieves, who struck last weekend, left only £1.66 behind. However, the artist and the project’s organisers hailed it as a success. Artistic director Daniel Pitt said: “We do not consider the removal of the money to be a theft as [it] was there for people to interact with as they saw fit as part of this art project.” A springer spaniel is lucky to be alive after wolfing down 206 pebbles during a walk on the beach. Dilyn, who is 12 years old, became ill after walking by the sea in Barmouth, north Wales, and was…

RUSSIA This overture to China is only for show Die Welt (Hamburg) You can see why Western experts have been expressing alarm about Vladimir Putin’s massive war games in Siberia. The sheer scale of the five-day Vostok-18 exercises, Russia’s biggest since Soviet times, felt intimidating: they involved 300,000 troops, 1,000 aircraft and 36,000 armoured vehicles. But it was the unprecedented invitation to 3,200 Chinese soldiers to join in that has really caused concern. Could this signal the start of a dangerous new alliance – the two powers ganging up against their ideological foes in the West? Unlikely, says Pavel Lokshin. Old historical wounds aren’t that easily healed. Russia was one of the Western powers that humbled the Middle Kingdom, seizing Vladivostok, now the base of the Russian Pacific Fleet, from…

Penicillin is derived from them; they are essential for making bread and alcohol; and 90% of plants depend on them to survive. The world as we know it couldn’t exist without fungi, and yet according to the authors of the first global assessment of the fungal kingdom – comprising mushrooms, yeasts and moulds – we’ve barely scratched the surface of our understanding of them. The report estimates that there are 3.8 million fungi species in the world, yet only 144,000 are known to science. That leaves us vulnerable to the threat posed by fungi (some of the most damaging crop pathogens are fungal), but also means we’re under-exploiting their potential benefits, which are myriad. Last year, a fungi with an enzyme that breaks down plastic was discovered in a Pakistani…

Mark Wahlberg has revealed the punishing regime behind his honed physique. According to a timetable he posted on Instagram, the 47-year-old actor (pictured) gets up at 2.30am for half an hour of “prayer time”. After breakfast at 3.15, he does a 95-minute workout, followed by another meal, a shower, half an hour of golf and a snack. At 9.30, it’s time for “cryo chamber recovery”, a treatment similar to an ice bath that helps alleviate muscle and joint pain. Another workout follows in the afternoon, along with snacks and meals, and “family time”. He goes to bed at 7.30pm. Right-wing provocateur Katie Hopkins has applied for an insolvency agreement, to stave off bankruptcy. The former Apprentice star is struggling to pay £130,000 in legal costs from her failed libel battle…

“I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learnt how to swim.” Frida Kahlo, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” Bertrand Russell, quoted in The Times “There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers.” Ronald Reagan, quoted in The Washington Post “My ignorance of science is such that if anyone mentioned copper nitrate I should think he was talking about a policeman’s overtime.” Former Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan, quoted in The Times “In the typical Punjabi household, there are only two cooking modes: making a curry for 36 people or feeding a curry made for 36 people to six people.” Sathnam Sanghera in The Times “Only the shallow know themselves.” Oscar…

Lewis Hamilton is in the form of his life, said Giles Richards in The Guardian. In Singapore last weekend, he “looked a class apart from his rivals”. First, the Mercedes driver “nailed an extraordinary lap” to take pole. Then he won the Grand Prix itself with “almost transcendent skill and a ruthless execution”. When he’s performing like this, there’s a “relentless, intimidating quality” to his driving that no one can match. Hamilton executed the race to perfection, said Rebecca Clancy in The Times. He extended his world championship lead over his arch-rival, Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel, by a “commanding” 40 points. And, not for the first time this season, his victory showed up Ferrari’s ineptitude. With a track well suited to the Italians’ car, this race should have been theirs…

To The Times Suppose I could magically know, beforehand, that a second Brexit referendum would confirm the public’s appetite for departure from the EU, I would still favour holding the referendum. It seems to me that both Leavers and Remainers would equally do well to support it. If the country is to heal from these few years of sometimes quite vicious argument, the country as a whole needs to take responsibility for, and own, the result. Without a confirming referendum, if that is what it were to be, a large part of the country will always feel that the Government or one party or part of one party made the decision and duped the electorate at an early stage to go along. Without it, the issue of our relationship with…

Crazy Rich Asians Dir: Jon M. Chu 2hrs 1min (12A) The best romcom in ages ★★★ An almost unprecedented example of a Hollywood movie with a mostly Asian or Asian-American cast, Crazy Rich Asians has already earned $164m at the US box office. And for good reason, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. It is “the best romcom in ages”. The story starts in New York, where a beautiful young economics professor (Constance Wu) has no idea her modest boyfriend Nick (Henry Golding) is scion to one of the richest families in Singapore. The penny drops when she’s invited to a family wedding and finds herself under scrutiny from Nick’s terrifying tiger mother (Michelle Yeoh). The leads are charming, but the film is made by its supporting turns, said…

Whatever you think about Damien Hirst, a decade ago, he made art history. His Beautiful Inside My Head Forever auction at Sotheby’s in London, which began on 15 September 2008, the same day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, had 223 new works sell for a whopping $201m, said Tim Schneider on ArtNet.com. But since then, Hirst’s prices have plummeted. A total of 19 of those 223 works have been sold on at auction – 17 of them at a loss. And declines were steep: the 19 pieces originally sold, in total, for $8.1m in 2008; when they were sold again, they made only $5.2m – a collective loss of nearly $3m. For instance, a painting of a skull, Beautiful Mider, sold for £670,000 in 2008, but was resold last…

Freddie refutes Lily’s suggestion that he told the college about Russ and points out it was probably his wife. Helen thinks Bridge Farm should bring back the dairy herd to save the cheese. Tom isn’t keen, but Tony likes the idea. Shula tells Harrison she supports his decision to arrest Freddie; it’s the wake-up call he needs. Phoebe and Lily meet Russ for lunch. Afterwards, Lily’s keen to hear Phoebe’s view. Phoebe says he obviously loves her, but worries how they’ll cope financially if Russ is banned from teaching. Johnny calls in on Freddie and makes peace. Alistair’s touched by Jazzer’s surprise birthday party. Elizabeth cooks dinner for Lily’s last night. Usha’s told Elizabeth that the college will talk to social services and the police and Lily will be interviewed.…

Worton Organic Garden Worton Farm, Worton, Oxfordshire (07718-518964) The garden’s café, set in an “appealingly ramshackle” market garden near Oxford, “won my heart”, says Tim Hayward in the FT. Service was “so patchy, so brilliantly scatty, it felt like an extended Victoria Wood sketch in which Virginia and Vita open a tea room”. Yet for me, this merely added to the joyful surprise of being served stunning food. A “seductive” Southeast Asian salad of thin-sliced rare beef with cold noodles, freshly picked vegetables, and a “positively electrifying” mix of fresh herbs – plus “enough of a reassuring bass hum of fishy nam pla to let you know you were in expert hands” – was without doubt “the high point of my very greedy summer”. Homemade ice creams (we tried…

Tips of the week… how to renovate a house Some rules of renovating, according to Sian Astley, aka the Lady Builder: ● Live in your home for six months before deciding what to do. Think about everything (even the location of light switches) and budget realistically. ● Be prepared to change your plan – you’ll uncover problems as you go. ● Start at the top of the house – dust falls. ● Consider future costs. For instance, if you use insulated plasterboard on walls, it could save you a lot on heating bills in the future. ● Think about what jobs need doing and when. It's more cost-effective for an electrician to do the house in one go than bit by bit. ● Check if suppliers have clearance yards selling…

Versatile actress best remembered for a Carry On film Fenella Fielding 1927-2018 Sultry and slinky, with a doe-eyed gaze and a velvety drawl, Fenella Fielding, who has died aged 90, was most vividly associated with a single scene, in the spoof horror film Carry On Screaming!, said The Daily Telegraph. As the undead Valeria in spider-ish fake eyelashes and a tight red dress, she sprawls languorously over a sofa and asks the detective, Harry H. Corbett: “Do you mind if I smoke?” Moments later, clouds of dry ice start to rise from her writhing body “like a defective boiler”. “And I was trying to give up,” exclaims Corbett, lunging towards her. The film defined her as a cartoonish vamp, but she was more than that: she won rave reviews for…

The week’s best shares Anglo Asian Mining The Mail on Sunday The gold, copper and silver miner has “been through the wars”. But it has cut costs, transformed its facilities and increased production, and confirmed new mineable ores. Expected news of a maiden dividend is a boon. Buy. 50p. Dollar General The Daily Telegraph This operator of low-cost convenience stores in rural parts of the US (thus, making it immune to Amazon) has had 28 consecutive years of robust sales growth. There’s scope to open 13,000 new outlets. Buy. $108. Melrose Industries Investors Chronicle Melrose buys “plateauing industrial firms”, improves and sells them, and is confident it can deliver its promises after the GKN takeover. Management is incentivised, and it has a good M&A record. Buy. 220p. Ashtead Group The…

“As Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby must surely be familiar with the parable of the mote and the beam,” said the Daily Mail. Yet judging by his “blistering” speech at the Trades Union Congress conference last week, its lesson – that “we are all sinners and should strive at all costs to avoid hypocrisy” – is one the archbishop “has singularly failed to grasp”. In an address “dripping with extraordinary hyperbole”, he described zero-hours employment contracts as “the reincarnation of an ancient evil”, and accused Amazon of avoiding tax and “leeching” off the public. What he failed to mention is that some of the Church of England’s biggest investments are in Amazon, and that the Church itself routinely employs people on zero-hours contracts. More worrying still, Welby seems to have…

British and French fisherman have reached a deal to end the so-called “scallop wars” in the English Channel. The row broke out last month when French vessels surrounded British boats in the Baie de Seine, off the coast of Normandy. Stones were thrown and vessels rammed. The French were angry that while their rules prevent them scallop fishing in the area between 15 May and 1 October, to allow stocks to recover during spawning season, British boats are allowed to fish all year round. Under Monday’s deal, British vessels longer than 15 metres will in future leave the area until November in exchange for expanded rights elsewhere.…

Étalle, Belgium Swine fever: African swine fever has been diagnosed in two wild boars in Belgium, sparking calls for a mass cull of the species to protect western Europe’s pig population. The highly contagious disease – incurable in pigs but harmless to humans – was eradicated in mainland Europe in the mid-1990s, but re-emerged in Georgia in 2007. It crossed into the European Union in 2014, and has rapidly spread west over the past year; an outbreak in Romania’s biggest pig farm last month led to the culling of all 140,000 of the farm’s animals. To counter the spread of the disease, Belgium’s farming minister has announced restrictions on the movement of livestock and a temporary ban on boar-hunting; one Flemish farmers’ group called for a cull of all the…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured opera singer Danielle de Niese 1 You Get What You Give by Gregg Alexander and Rick Nowels, performed by New Radicals 2* Evergreen by Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams, performed by Barbra Streisand 3 Mi tradi quell’alma ingrata by Mozart, performed by Lorin Maazel with Kiri Te Kanawa and the orchestra of the Théâtre National de l’Opéra, Paris 4 Christmas Present for Sallie by Leonard De Paur, performed by Leonard De Paur with The De Paur Chorus 5 A Little Fall of Rain by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, performed by Frances Ruffelle, Michael Ball and members of the original 1985 London cast of Les Misérables 6 Swallowed in the Sea by Chris Martin,…

Last week’s episode of Ben Elton’s Shakespeare comedy, Upstart Crow, featured a character that was unmistakably a satirical portrayal of Mark Rylance: Wolf Hall, “the greatest actor of his age” (the name is a nod to Rylance’s most famous TV role, as Thomas Cromwell in the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels). “I do not shout and I do not strut,” Hall declares. “I have developed a revolutionary new style. Subtle, nuanced, emoting from within, by means of long, sad-eyed stares, pregnant with weary wisdom and penetrating perception.” He is also not terribly bright, and is duped by Shakespeare’s enemy Robert Greene into believing that the man from Stratford didn’t really write his own plays. As the cunning Greene explains: “If there’s one thing I know about actors... it is…

The outrageous cost of US colleges Amanda Ripley The Atlantic Why is college in America so expensive? The latest OECD figures confirm that the US is in a class of its own, says Amanda Ripley. “Americans spend about $30,000 per university student per year, nearly twice as much as the average developed country.” Only Luxembourg spends more. It’s tempting to blame this on all the fancy facilities on US campuses today – the climbing walls, the dining halls with open-fire-pit grills. But there is more to it. The root of the problem is the decline in state funding for higher education. These cutbacks, pushed over recent decades by conservative proponents of small government, were meant to make colleges more efficient, but they just made them “more entrepreneurial”. Colleges began competing…

Just a criss-crossed, hashtag-like pattern on a tiny fragment of rock unearthed in a cave in South Africa, it doesn’t look like much. But scientists believe that the pattern was made 73,000 years ago – making it Homo sapien’s earliest known drawing. Previously, that record was held by abstract art found in caves in Spain and Indonesia, dating back some 40,000 years. The nine red lines, on a flake of rock barely bigger than a postage stamp, were spotted by chance in 2011, as a researcher sorted through spear points, beads and other artefacts found in Blombos Cave, 190 miles east of Cape Town. It has taken since then to establish that the lines were drawn (not painted) in red ochre, using an ochre crayon; as the lines end abruptly,…

Last week was meant to be the week when the hard-line Brexiteers of the European Research Group “finally revealed their hand”, said Katy Balls in The Spectator. The group of some 80 Tory MPs, led by the ubiquitous Jacob Rees-Mogg, was going to publish “a Brexit plan to rival Theresa May’s”. Some in the PM’s camp feared that it would be “the final nail in the coffin” for her Chequers proposal. But in the event, the ERG’s plan B never “came to fruition”. The group’s fractious MPs were unable to agree on a united vision, said Camilla Tominey in The Daily Telegraph. Insiders revealed that the blueprint had been shelved over concerns about its “accuracy and eccentricity”: it included some off-the-wall ideas, such as a plan to build a Star…

Until six years ago, no British cyclist had ever won one of the three grand tours, said Tom Cary in The Sunday Telegraph. Those big stage races – the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España – had always been dominated by riders from Italy, France, Belgium and Spain. But since 2012, when Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France, British cyclists have triumphed in nine of the past 20 grand tours. That astonishing sequence was extended on Sunday, when Simon Yates, a 26-year-old from Bury, clinched victory in the Vuelta. It capped a “historic clean sweep” for British cycling: following Chris Froome’s win in the Giro and Geraint Thomas’s in the Tour, each of this year’s grand tours has been won by a different British cyclist –…

Boxing Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez inflicted a first career defeat on Gennady Golovkin to claim the WBC and WBA world middleweight titles. Rugby union South Africa beat New Zealand 36-34. Argentina beat Australia 23-19. In the Premiership, Wasps beat Leicester Tigers 41-35. Saracens beat Northampton Saints 38-27. Football Liverpool and Chelsea both maintained their 100% records: Liverpool with a 2-1 win over Tottenham, Chelsea with a 4-1 victory over Cardiff. Manchester City beat Fulham 3-0.…

The Iliad by Homer, c.750BC (Penguin £12.99). One of the greatest works in Western literature, it shows the complexity of war – its violence, horror and nobility. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, 1869 (Modern Library £13.99). As a teenager I was interested in the descriptions of Russian society life. It’s part of Tolstoy’s genius that re-reading him brings something new. Where once I skimmed the war parts, I’m now riveted by his evocation of the confusion of battle and the strange exhilaration of destruction. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, 1990 (Harper Collins £8.99). Vietnam for the Americans was a futile war in which they lost their innocence. O’Brien never puts a foot wrong in evoking the experience of US soldiers in a country which most of them…

Programmes Mystery Road A six-part spin-off from the 2013 film of the same name, starring Aaron Pedersen as a detective investigating two missing boys in Australia. Sat 22 Sept, BBC4 21:00 (110mins). Dancer 2016 documentary tracing the life of the extraordinary ballet dancer Sergei Polunin and the troubled nature of his talent. Sat 22 Sept, BBC2 23:00 (80mins). The Flu That Killed 50 Million Christopher Eccleston narrates this docudrama about the 1918 flu pandemic that killed more than 50 million people. Tue 25 Sept, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Manson: The Lost Tapes Fifty years ago, film-maker Robert Hendrickson was given access to Charles Manson and his followers. His documentary about the Family came out in 1973; this film draws on 100 hours of unused footage, which only resurfaced after Hendrickson died…

Colourful carrot salad Serves 4 4tbsps natural Greek yogurt a few drops of orange flower water a good squeeze of fresh orange juice 1 orange salt and pepper 6 carrots of different colours, or just use orange ones if you want (but that’s a bit dull!) chopped pistachios and ground cinnamon, for dusting flat-leaf parsley, to garnish • In a bowl, mix the yogurt with the orange flower water, the orange juice and a little grated zest from the orange. Season with salt and pepper and set aside. • Cut the carrots lengthwise into very thin ribbons: the easiest way to do this is with a speed (swivel) peeler. Slice the top and bottom off the orange and stand it upright. Using a small sharp knife, cut away the thick…

Audi Q8 from £65,040 Autocar The flagship Audi Q8, an answer to the BMW X6 SUV-cum-coupé, could have been a “dreamboat” model, giving the brand something different to boast about. But while the car doesn’t give any serious cause for complaint, it is basically Audi’s Q7 SUV made “a bit better looking, a bit less practical and a bit more interesting to drive”. It’s another “Russian doll” for the Q-car line-up. Auto Express There are some reasons to buy a Q8 over a Q7, though. The new rakish design and overhauled interior give this stylish car a fresh feel; and outside, touches like the full-width LED light strip on the tailgate and frameless windows give it a sportier look. Passenger space doesn’t suffer much from the sloping roof – aside…

Most tourists in Indonesia head straight to Bali, for beaches and temples and luxury resorts. To see a wilder side of the vast archipelagic nation, try Sumatra instead. This huge, jungled island is home to tigers, flowers “the size of truck tyres” and – most distinctively – orangutans, says Saki Knafo in Travel + Leisure. Once found all over Southeast Asia, these endangered apes now live only here, and in nearby Borneo. Almost all of the 7,000 or so on Sumatra inhabit the Leuser Ecosystem, a sprawling rainforest that is “nominally protected”, but shrinking owing to slash-and-burn palm forest cultivation, fuelled by the global demand for palm oil. Along the road to the forest from the regional capital, Medan, plantations of these “tall, spare” trees dominate every view. The village…

Investec: zebra on the menu? It is not unusual for Investec, whose emblem is a zebra, to “bemuse the City”, said Lex in the FT. The odd South African-UK hybrid spans investment banking, funds and wealth management. “Perplexity” about its lack of focus means it has a rather “dowdy” valuation of less than ten times forward earnings, compared to about 13 for similar outfits. On the face of it, then, the plan announced last week – to demerge its fund management arm as Investec Asset Management – looks sensible. It’s not a guaranteed win, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. To make sense, the extra simplicity and management focus must create enough value to outweigh the costs of a second board, a second set of head office functions and so…

Sexism is bad for business Jana Bakunina Financial Times The level of ingrained sexism in the venture capital (VC) world astonishes me, says Jana Bakunina. As a female venture capitalist (who runs Silvergate Investments with Waheed Alli) I often find myself explaining to male financiers that we only invest in women entrepreneurs, or men from minority backgrounds. And invariably I’m met with the same response: they either assume we are a charity or a social impact fund (we’re neither), or they say, “Great, but why limit yourself?” The answer is that for commercial reasons we focus on a segment of the market where “opportunities are largely overlooked – and therefore attractive”. In the first quarter of 2018 only 9% of global VC funding went to start-ups with at least one…

Mr Wheeler are not one of our usual six merchants, but they are adventurous in their offering and sent me some wonderful wines to try. I’ve whittled it down to six and these are available alongside our current monthly offer at TheWeekWines.com. There are wines from the classic regions of Burgundy, the Loire and Rhône Valleys alongside new discoveries in Portugal, New Zealand and southern Italy. I have selected a delightful Italian wine from the Fiano grape and a white Burgundy that is actually grown in Beaujolais. Who would have thought that Portugal makes interesting table wines from the same grape varieties used in Port? Wines should excite or intrigue, and this selection really delivers on that — as well as offering huge savings! Enjoy, SAVE up to £84 Moa…

The notoriously addictive online video game Fortnite isn’t just ensnaring children. Apparently, it is now being cited as a factor in people’s divorces. Divorce Online, a British website offering services to separating couples, says the game has been cited in 200 of the divorce petitions it has handled since the start of 2018, about 5% of the total. It seems that though Britons are generally veering away from religion, they turn back to it when they’re ill. In the British Social Attitudes Survey, 52% of people said that they had no religious affiliation; but a study of data collected by the NHS has found that when patients were asked that question in hospital, only 15% of those who answered stated that they belonged to no religion.…

Under reforms to be put before Parliament, couples seeking a divorce will no longer have to prove who is at “fault”, to avoid what David Gauke, the justice secretary called “unnecessary antagonism”. Currently, people must prove their marriage has broken down due to adultery, desertion or unreasonable behaviour, or be separated for two years (five if one party does not consent to the divorce). Under the new plans, “the irretrievable breakdown of a marriage” will be the sole grounds for a divorce.…

“Hannah Fry’s book Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine features a story about a man who drove onto a dirt track, through a fence and almost off a cliff because his satellite navigation told him to. I laughed along with everyone else when I came across the tale – what a prat! – but this week I missed a double-decker bus because an app on my phone told me it was still four minutes away. The week before? I gently reversed a hire car into a tree because it didn’t feature the parking sensors I’m used to. Technology is going to be the death of us all.” Sathnam Sanghera in The Times…

Policing the streets is not a private matter Alice Thomson The Times The rise in crime in England and Wales is accelerating, says Alice Thomson: police figures for last year show a 13% increase in recorded offences. It’s hardly surprising. Over the past eight years, central government funding to police forces has shrunk by 30% – there are 20,000 fewer officers and the remainder can’t cope. Last year, the Met dropped 30,000 criminal investigations within 24 hours of starting them. No wonder in the posher parts of London residents are turning to firms such as My Local Bobby, who, for a subscription of about £50 a month, will supply uniformed staff to confront anyone acting suspiciously. The trend is spreading to the shires, too: the Somerset village of Martock, for…

Why hand dryers spread germs Automatic jet hand dryers blast bacteria and faecal traces around the room, making them significantly less hygienic than old-fashioned paper dispensers, researchers have warned. The team sampled hospital toilets in the UK, Italy and France. All contained a hand dryer and a towel dispenser, but during their 12-week study, only one of these was in use on any given day. When the researchers analysed swabs taken in the rooms, they found that potentially harmful microbes – including E. coli – were up to five times as plentiful on floors on the days when jet dryers were in use, and were more concentrated in the air, in dust and on sinks and mirrors. Professor Mark Wilcox, a microbiologist at the University of Leeds who led the…

She doesn’t fit the mould of a Tory politician – Ruth Davidson is “a working-class, winningly informal, cheerfully profane 39-year-old lesbian former kick-boxer, expecting her first child with her fiancée”, said Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday Times. But without her, Theresa May would be out of a job: under Davidson’s inspiring leadership, the Scottish Tories won a crucial 13 seats in the last general election. Since then, everyone has been talking of her as a future PM. Alas, there’s one small problem: she doesn’t want the job. As she reveals in her new book, she has had mental health issues since her teens, when she cut herself with broken glass and drank herself “to oblivion”; though it’s 12 years since she last suffered from depression, she’s worried the pressure of…

There are athletes whose feats are “so unthinkable, so incomprehensible, that they are hard to fathom”, said Ben Bloom in The Daily Telegraph. Think of Michael Johnson, Bob Beamon, Usain Bolt. On Sunday, Eliud Kipchoge, the 33-year-old Kenyan runner, added his name to that list when he ran the Berlin Marathon in an astonishing two hours, one minute and 39 seconds. Kipchoge didn’t only shave 78 seconds off the previous world record, set by his countryman Dennis Kipruto Kimetto in Berlin four years ago. “He destroyed it. Put it so far out of reach it is difficult to envisage anyone surpassing it for years to come.” “This was a triumph 15 years in the making,” said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. Kipchoge “first advertised his talents” at the 2003 World…

Wrong about Welby To The Guardian Might it have occurred to Simon Jenkins and others that a possible reason for the decline in Church of England attendance might have something to do with the Church not being radical enough? By such it would expose itself to the risk of relevance in the world in which we actually live, rather than the world we might eventually wish to be. Justin Welby is right to examine economic issues (about which he is competent to speak) and taxation and benefit policies that adversely affect often the poor and most vulnerable. It is unfortunate that he failed to check the current church commissioners’ investment portfolio, which now presents the Church with the opportunity to disinvest from the likes of Amazon. It ought to be…

Theatre The Village Playwright: April De Angelis Director: Nadia Fall Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15 (020-8534 0310). Until 6 October Running time: 2hrs (including interval) ★★★ Theatre Royal Stratford East is the once-great venue that in the heady days of Joan Littlewood gave us A Taste of Honey and Oh What a Lovely War, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Could it be about to reclaim its place at the “vanguard” of British theatre? I don’t wish to jump to conclusions from “just one riveting night out”, but this tremendous first show from its new artistic director, Nadia Fall, is an astonishing statement of intent. It’s a stunning version of Lope de Vega’s Spanish classic Fuenteovejuna (1619), updated to modern-day Uttar Pradesh – a serious, resonant piece of work,…

Showing now Dylan Moran: Dr Cosmos at Curve, Leicester (0116-242 3595). The Irish comedian lives “up to his sizeable reputation” as he grapples with topics including love, politics and everyday absurdities (Guardian). 23 September, then touring (dylanmoran.com). Six at the Arts Theatre, London WC2 (020-7836 8463). This musical – which turns the lives of Henry VIII’s wives into a Britain’s Got Talent-esque sing-a-thon – “is an absolute blast” (Daily Telegraph). Until 14 October, then Kingston, Southampton and on (sixthemusical.com). Book now Father Ted’s Pauline McLynn plays the matriarch in Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht’s play about a woman profiteering from the Thirty Years War, in a new translation by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot, War Horse). 28 September-20 October, Leeds Playhouse at the Albion Electric Warehouse, Leeds (0113-213 7700).…

Muscadet may be “unsung”, but don’t neglect it, says Jane MacQuitty in The Times. This dry Loire wine delivers “the sort of crisp, refreshing, slimline, tangy white wines that contemporary drinkers love” – and at a “keen” price, too. At the cheaper end, the 2015 Signature Muscadet (£6; Morrisons), is a “good, grassy, lemon-edged sip”. Or try Aldi’s “ridiculously good value for money, leafy, yeasty, bone-dry” 2017 Exquisite Collection Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie (£5.69). Moving up a bit, I recommend the 2015 Château l’Oiselinière de la Ramée Muscadet (£8.25; Wine Society), a “zingy, apple blossom, green pear and citrus-edged delight”. Also from the Wine Society, for a bit more money, there’s the 2014 Château l’Oiselinière Le Clos, a mouthwatering, steely, citrusy, minerally triumph (£12.95). On the upper tier…

Philips Somneo Really committing to the sunrise alarm effect, the Somneo starts with a warm red light just before your wake-up time, which then grows in brightness to sunshine yellow, eventually adding a birdsong alarm (£190; philips.co.uk). iLuv SmartShaker The SmartShaker is a flat, battery-powered vibrating disk that you set from your smartphone, then place under your pillow. The idea being that its vibrations will wake you without disturbing anyone else (£30; amazon.co.uk). WITTI Design BEDDI Glow This smartphone-controlled alarm will not only wake you up (using a light of the colour and brightness of your choosing), it’ll get you to sleep too, with ocean, forest, wind or rain sounds. It also has USB ports to charge your gadgets (£75; amazon.co.uk). Lumie Bodyclock Starter 30 If you’re looking for a…

Set in a mountainous corner of western Massachusetts, three hours by car from Boston or New York, the town of North Adams (pop. 13,708) was a thriving centre of cotton production in the 19th century. Having fallen on hard times in the 20th, it is now undergoing a radical reinvention, says Sunshine Flint in Condé Nast Traveller – as the US’s latest “go-to creative escape”. The “catalyst” was Mass MoCA – the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art – a “juggernaut” of an institution housed in former factory buildings, founded in 1999 and doubled in size last year. Now, three new museums are on the way, one of them designed by Frank Gehry, and known as the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum, in a complex that also contains a…

Richard Hadida The software entrepreneur Richard Hadida is a hardheaded businessman with deep pockets from his stake in the live-action gambling developer Evolution Gaming, says Alan Tovey in The Sunday Telegraph. But when it comes to his love of sailing, he’s a romantic. Hadida, 53, owns a large collection of Horatio Nelson memorabilia, including the watch he was wearing when he died at Trafalgar. And his spur-of-the-moment decision to buy the luxury yacht-maker Oyster when it went into administration in February, was, he admits, driven by “heart rather than head”. “It’s a terrible cliché, but I felt it was my calling,” he says. Hadida cheerfully admits he knows nothing about boatbuilding, and is equally clear about what he brings to the business. “Money. It’s expensive doing this. And as a…