Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1200 i The Week

What happened The giveaway Budget Philip Hammond declared this week that Britain’s era of austerity was “finally coming to an end”, as he unveiled the biggest giveaway Budget since the Tories came to power in 2010. Buoyed by a £13bn annual windfall from better-than-expected tax receipts and borrowing forecasts, the Chancellor announced plans to boost funding for strained public services, and to bring forward income tax cuts and increases in the national living wage. But in a clear warning to Eurosceptics, Hammond insisted that these spending commitments were dependent on the UK securing a Brexit deal with the EU, a sentiment he later softened. The biggest beneficiary of the Budget is the NHS, which is set to receive £20.5bn a year of extra funding. Hammond also announced another £1.7bn a…

Fracking at the UK’s only active shale gas site was halted this week, following the largest earth tremor since work began two weeks ago. The earthquake on Monday, which measured 1.1 on the Richter scale, prompted the firm Cuadrilla to halt work at the Lancashire site for 18 hours – the third such pause in four days. The firm was forced to stop fracking entirely in 2011 following a series of tremors in the area; under its current licence, it must halt work in the event of a tremor of 0.5-magnitude or more. None of the earthquakes so far have been powerful enough to be felt at ground level (see page 47).…

Oldenburg, Germany Hospital killings: At the opening of the trial of the most prolific serial killer in German history, the accused has admitted to the murder of 100 patients. Niels Högel, 41, a former nurse, had already been jailed on six counts of murder and attempted murder, but has now confessed to further killings, prompting a new investigation. Prosecutors at his latest trial say that in each case he administered a drug that caused cardiac arrest, and then tried to revive the patient, hoping to be seen as a hero – but in most cases he failed. The victims’ ages ranged from 34 to 96, and investigators say he may have killed more than 200 people. Dublin Green light for blasphemy: In a decisive 65% to 35% vote in last…

A groundbreaking kiss The first black actor to have won an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony, Viola Davis has been in some 75 films – but it’s only now, at 53, that she has been given a lead role in a major movie, says Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. An adaptation of Lynda La Plante’s 1983 miniseries, Steve McQueen’s Widows opens with her lying in bed, kissing her on-screen husband, Liam Neeson. A married couple kissing is not remarkable, but for Davis, the scene is groundbreaking. “This is something you’ll not see this year, last year, the year before that,” she says. “That is, a dark-skinned woman of colour, at 53 years old, kissing Liam Neeson. Not just kissing a white man,” she adds, “Liam Neeson, a hunk. And…

The EU’s customs union is an agreement between all EU nations to abolish customs controls and tariffs on goods crossing their shared borders. To make that workable, all EU member states have to apply common custom tariffs on all goods imported from outside the bloc – about 10% on cars from Korea or the US for example. Such tariffs are collected by each nation, but paid on to the EU. Clearly a nation can’t strike free-trade deals with outside countries and remain inside a customs union: if a post-Brexit Britain were free to buy cheap US chicken or Chinese steel, it could then re-export them (or products made from them) to the EU, and undercut local producers. That is why goods entering the EU from Norway (which is outside the…

What does it involve? Also known as the “cliff edge”, it would be the very hardest of Brexits: leaving the structures of the EU without any deal to replace them. In practice, the term covers quite a few different scenarios, all the way from utter chaos – with planes unable to fly between Britain and Europe, British meat prevented from entering Europe, medicine shortages and the Channel ports gridlocked – to a basic but more orderly contingency plan to move UK-EU trade to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. Either way, there’d be immediate and extensive border checks and heavy tariffs on some goods. For example, on WTO terms, cars and car parts would face 10% duties every time they cross the border. Agricultural tariffs would be significantly higher, up to…

Plastics in the body Scientists have obtained the first clear evidence that plastic is finding its way into the human body. For the pilot study, researchers at the Medical University of Vienna recruited eight adults from across Europe and Asia, and asked them to supply stool samples along with a record of what they’d been eating. Every sample was found to contain plastics, including nine of the ten most common types. Microplastics – pieces less than 5mm in diameter – have previously been found not only in oceans and in the air, but also in many packaged foods, including bottled water and honey. “This confirms what we’ve long suspected, that plastics ultimately reach the human gut,” said Dr Philipp Schwabl, who led the research. On its own, the presence of…

“Should it be illegal to call the Prophet Mohammed a ‘paedophile’?” That, said Kenan Malik in The Observer, was the question in front of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last week. The case dated back to 2009, when an Austrian woman known as ES held seminars promoted by Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, in which she accused Mohammed of paedophilic tendencies – citing his marriage to Aisha, who was, according to Islamic scripture, only nine when the marriage was consummated. An Austrian court convicted her of “disparaging religious doctrines” and fined her s480. The ECHR, finding that her words went “beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate”, upheld that conviction. A day later, Ireland voted overwhelmingly to scrap its blasphemy law, said Fraser Myers on Spiked. Yet the…

On Sunday afternoon, Lewis Hamilton “took a giant leap into Formula One immortality”, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. The Mercedes driver came fourth in the Mexican Grand Prix, earning enough points to secure a fifth world title with two races to spare. He is now the joint second-most successful driver of all time, level with Juan Manuel Fangio; and at only 33, he could yet “vault past Michael Schumacher’s seven and seal his place as the greatest driver who has ever lived”. Hamilton has been “near faultless”, winning nine of the 19 races so far; his closest rival, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, boasts only five victories. What’s truly remarkable is that Hamilton was driving a Mercedes, said Andrew Benson on BBC Sport online. In the previous four seasons, the…

To The Times Philip Collins suggests that MPs should back any deal Theresa May negotiates, even though they know it will be miserable, because otherwise we may fall into an even deeper circle of hell – crashing out of the EU with no deal at all. If the only choices were the Prime Minister’s purgatory and Boris Johnson’s hell, Collins’s advice might be sensible. But there is a third: holding a new referendum and giving the people the option to avoid both hell and purgatory. The chance of getting such a People’s Vote is high after 700,000 people took part in last month’s march. So Collins presents MPs with a false dilemma. Some risk-averse MPs might still be tempted by his logic, on the basis that there is no guarantee…

Robyn: Honey Konichiwa Records £10 It is eight years since Swedish pop genius Robyn’s last album, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Naturally, this is not ideal in a field “where attention spans are short and memories shorter still”. But with this terrific collection, Robyn “shows her imitators how it’s done” – playing with the modern pop palette to create a wonderfully “complex heartbreak album”. It may not help Robyn dominate the charts; it feels too opaque and introspective for that. But “as evidence of a unique artist pursuing a personal vision in a world filled with the commonplace, however, Honey is perfect”. Balancing melancholy and escapism, these new songs – a mere nine, which seems a touch miserly – “wrap themselves around you like the Robyn of old”, said…

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902 (Wordsworth £2.50). Despite the multiple on-screen adaptations – my personal favourite is the 1959 Hammer version – nothing quite matches the book. Although Holmes is absent through much of this tale, Watson does a fine job of creating the sense of dread and evil that permeates it. Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett by Georges Simenon, 1931 (out of print). The plots are not always complex and the books are short, but they are richly atmospheric. Maigret is an engaging Parisian police detective, equally at home among businessmen and politicians as he is among prostitutes and petty criminals. The Chill by Ross Macdonald, 1964 (Penguin £9.99). Macdonald brings a touch of psychological drama to the hard-boiled PI world, and his…

Programmes Beck: Flesh & Blood The acclaimed Swedish detective returns, to be drawn into a case involving a missing girl in Stockholm. Sat 3 Nov, BBC4 21:00 (95mins). Louis Theroux’s Altered States: Love Without Limits New series. The acclaimed documentarian travels to Oregon to meet people searching for contentment in non-monogamous relationships. Sun 4 Nov, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Doing Money This true story of a woman snatched in London and trafficked to Ireland to be used as a sex slave gives a powerful insight into modern slavery and the difficulties in policing it. Mon 5 Nov, BBC2 21:00 (90mins). Killer by the Lake In this follow-up to the French thriller Vanished by the Lake, Lise and Clovis are now working beside Lake Annecy, where they join forces to find a…

Lemon fluff with limoncello cream 40g butter 225g caster sugar 3 organic, free-range eggs 75g plain flour 2 organic, unwaxed lemons 300ml whole milk icing sugar, to decorate 300ml softly whipped cream flavoured with limoncello, or crème fraiche, to serve • Preheat the oven to 180°C. • Cream the butter until really soft, then add the caster sugar and beat well. Separate the 3 egg yolks and whisk in one by one, then stir in the flour. • Grate the rind of the 2 lemons on the finest part of the grater. Squeeze and strain the juice, and add the rind and juice, then add the milk. • Whisk the egg whites stiffly in a bowl and fold gently into the lemon mixture. Pour into a 1.2-litre pie dish, place…

As Europe’s “unofficial capital of cool”, Lisbon has had plenty of new boutique hotels opening lately. Of them all, The Lumiares “channels the Portuguese spirit” most “winningly”, says Condé Nast Traveller. Located in the old city, it occupies a restored 18th century palace and almost everything in it has been designed and made locally, from the mid-century modern-style furniture to the “plush” bedroom rugs and the typographic artworks featuring Fernando Pessoa’s poems. There are two great restaurants: one, a more casual affair, is at street level, the other is on the roof, where there’s also a fashionable bar with wonderful views. Doubles from about £170. thelumiares.com .…

The war hero who foiled the Nazis’ atomic bomb plans Joachim Rønneberg 1919-2018 Joachim Rønneberg was only 23 years old when he led one of the most celebrated commando raids of the Second World War. On the night of 16 February 1943, he and five other men parachuted onto a 1,000-metre mountain plateau in the snowy wastes of Telemark, in southern Norway; 11 days later, under the cover of darkness, they skied down through a pine forest and halted beside a deep gorge. Below them, on the other side, they could see a humming hydroelectric plant where the Nazis were working on a top-secret project, said The New York Times. All Rønneberg had been told was that it was distilling something called heavy water, and that the success of the…

It’s a tough time for “casual dining” on the high street, says John-Paul Ford Rojas on Sky News. But some still have big appetites. The Restaurant Group (TRG) – which already owns Frankie & Benny’s and Chiquito – has pitched in to buy the Asian food chain Wagamama in a £559m deal, much of it financed by debt. TRG reckons the move will prove “transformative”, but its takeover of Wagamama, which has nearly 200 outlets, appears to have given investors dyspepsia: shares fell 17%. In recent years, TRG has been in such dire straits that it was issuing profit warnings and closing outlets. The fear now is that it may have bitten off more than it can chew.…

Personal tax boost The centrepiece of the Budget was a surprise £3bn “income tax giveaway”, said Patrick Collinson in The Guardian. Sadly, it will “leave low earners with little or no gain”. The Chancellor has brought forward an existing pledge to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £12,500 and to raise the 40p higher-rate threshold to £50,000. He claims to have given 32 million people a tax cut, and to have taken 1.7 million Britons out of tax altogether since 2015. But the rises in personal allowances only really “translate into significant tax cuts further up the income scale”. For someone on £12,500, the increase is worth £130. For those on £50,000, it is worth £860 a year – reduced to £520, once changes to national insurance are taken into…

The week’s best shares Bloomsbury Investors Chronicle A spate of grown-up bestsellers has boosted revenues at the publisher, which normally relies on the enduring popularity of the Harry Potter books for momentum. With Christmas ahead, the outlook’s good. Buy. 200p. Carnival The Daily Telegraph This well-run cruise giant is benefiting from favourable demographic trends and cost advantages. It’s immune to “Amazon-style attack” and has growing profits. Yields 3.3%. Buy. £42.12. Informa Investors Chronicle A potentially transformative merger with UBM has boosted the publisher’s exposure to events, while £50m of “synergies” should boost margins. Two “world-renowned” academic publishing brands are another plus. Buy. 732.8p. B&M European Value Retail Shares The “variety” discount chain has snapped up France’s Babou Stores – a useful way to grow its proven profitable model across the…

Controversy of the week Brazil finds its Trump “Jair Bolsonaro is a right-wing Brazilian who holds repulsive views,” said The New York Times. “He has said that if he had a homosexual son, he’d prefer him dead; that a female colleague in the parliament was too ugly to rape; that Afro-Brazilians are lazy and fat; that global warming amounts to ‘greenhouse fables’.” A former army captain, he has frequently expressed his admiration for the military dictatorship that ran Brazil between 1964 and 1985. And last Sunday, he was elected president of the world’s fourth largest democracy, beating his leftist rival, Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party, by 55% to 45%. Brazil is emerging from its worst-ever recession; a corruption scandal has engulfed much of its ruling class; and crime is…

The head of Southampton’s student union came under fire last week for vowing to take down a “mural of white men” in the university senate room, “even if I have to paint over it myself”, on Twitter. Emily Dawes had apparently not realised that the mural, painted by Sir William Rothenstein in 1916, is a memorial to students killed in the First World War who were unable to complete their degrees. She has since apologised. British pet owners will spend £1.7bn this year on pets, and it is millennials who are fuelling the boom. According to research group Mintel, more than half of 19- to 38-year-olds say they’d rather cut back on spending on themselves than their pets; two out of five would spend as much on a Christmas gift…

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Synagogue massacre: Eleven people were killed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue last Saturday, when a gunman stormed the building shouting “all Jews must die”. It is believed to have been the deadliest anti-Semitic attack ever perpetrated in the US; Pittsburgh’s mayor called it the “darkest day” in the city’s history. The suspect, Robert Bowers, 46, was overpowered by police 20 minutes into his attack. An avowed white supremacist, he is believed to have been behind a slew of anti-Semitic posts on Gab, a social media site used by white nationalists, one of which accuses Jews of bringing “evil Muslims” to the US. President Trump condemned the attack, but was criticised for joking at a convention, hours later, that standing in the rain talking to journalists about the…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured businesswoman and CEO of Ann Summers, Jacqueline Gold 1 Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Robert Hazard, performed by Cyndi Lauper 2 I Feel Love by Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, performed by Donna Summer 3 I Was Made for Lovin’ You by Paul Stanley, Vini Poncia and Desmond Child, performed by Kiss 4 Tell It to My Heart by Seth Swirsky and Ernie Gold, performed by Taylor Dayne 5 My Love Is Your Love by Wyclef Jean and Jerry Duplessis, performed by Whitney Houston 6 Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) by Cristiano Spiller, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Rob Davis, performed by Spiller and Sophie Ellis-Bextor 7* Wishing on a Star…

What does it involve? This is the option that preserves the closest possible trading relationship with the EU without being part of its political union. It’s modelled on the compromise Norway made in 1994 after its bitter referendum on EU membership, in which 52% voted “out” and 48% “in”. So rather than join the EU, Norway remained a member of the newly created European Economic Area (EEA), and thereby of the EU’s single market but not its customs union (see box). It has left Norway free to decide its home affairs, farm and fisheries policies, and to negotiate trade deals with non-EU nations. Under this model, Britain would be able to sell most goods and services to EU states without paying import taxes (tariffs). But it would have to conform…

Europe and Britain are united in their determination not to impose a hard border in Ireland – a border once monitored, during the Troubles, by customs officials and security forces. But if, after Brexit, Northern Ireland and the Republic end up with different customs rules and product standards, goods passing between will have to be monitored somewhere – or the EU’s single market could be undermined. Last December, to keep negotiations going, May agreed to the “backstop”: that “in the absence of agreed solutions”, Northern Ireland, post Brexit, would stay fully aligned with the rules of the EU customs union and its single market. There is, as yet, no sign of such an agreed solution. The EU argues that to keep the Irish border open would require a customs border…

The spies who came out of the closet Ben Macintyre The Times “Are spies becoming more incompetent?” You’d think as much from the recent spate of high-profile espionage incidents, says Ben Macintyre. Russian poisoners in Salisbury claim to be innocent tourists; a Saudi hit squad murders a journalist in Istanbul and then heads home on traceable charter planes. The tradecraft was absurdly amateurish – but for reasons of chutzpah rather than ineptitude. Forget cloak and dagger. Autocratic regimes no longer carry out their dirty work in secret: they not only “operate in the space where espionage meets terrorism”, they want to be seen to do so. Pointedly brazen, the new espionage is designed to send a chilling message to dissidents, and cock a snook at the West, while retaining a…

CANADA Vancouver: a city afloat on Chinese cash Bloomberg (New York) Wealthy Chinese people have squirrelled a lot of money into safe assets abroad over recent years, say Matthew Campbell and Natalie Obiko Pearson, and much of it has ended up in Vancouver. The Canadian seaport is ideal for the purpose, being the closest big city in the West to Asia, with a welcoming attitude to immigrants and a somewhat “lax record of fighting financial crime”. Thanks to the “tidal wave of Chinese cash”, the city is now groaning with luxury shops. Property prices have gone through the roof: the average cost of a detached house in Vancouver has tripled since 2005. But this has led to growing anger among younger voters who have been priced out of the market.…

The New Caledonian crow is already famed for its ability to make tools, by, for instance, fashioning twigs into hooks. Now a new element can be added to its skill set: making tools from multiple components. Researchers at the University of Oxford presented eight crows with a “puzzle box” with some food out of reach within it. The crows were initially given long sticks and quickly learnt how to use these to manoeuvre the food to an opening on the box’s side. Then, they were given sticks that were too short to reach the food, but which could be slotted together (because some were hollow) to create a longer rod. Four of the crows managed to insert one stick into another, and used the extended pole to dislodge the food.…

Gary Barlow didn’t find life easy during his three years as a judge on The X Factor. He developed “a bad case of showbiz paranoia”, he writes in his new autobiography. And that was because whatever the judges discussed behind closed doors would find its way to the press. Barlow is convinced that the producers – who would stop at nothing to boost the show’s ratings – had bugged the dressing rooms. Sinéad O’Connor (pictured) has become a Muslim, and changed her name to Shuhada’ Davitt. The Irish singer, 51, was brought up a Roman Catholic, but in 1992 made headlines by ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II live on US television; seven years later, she was ordained a priest in the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic…

“How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.” Edward F. Benson, quoted on Forbes “In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face.” Diogenes of Sinope, quoted in The Times “Under normal circumstances, the liar is defeated by reality; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough to cover the immensity of factuality.” Hannah Arendt, quoted in The Guardian “I have learnt over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” Rosa Parks, quoted on YourStory “Grave good people, pious people, regular people, all like to read…

It was the biggest scandal to hit cricket in years, said Sam Perry in The Guardian. When Australia’s captain, Steve Smith, and vice-captain, David Warner, admitted in March to ball tampering against South Africa, it set off a “moral panic”. The punishments were “swift and eye-wateringly fierce”: Smith and Warner were banned for a year; Darren Lehmann resigned as head coach. But according to a damning new report, the problems go much deeper than that: the whole culture of Australian cricket is to blame. In particular, the report points the finger at Cricket Australia (CA), the governing body, calling its administrators “arrogant” and “controlling”. Ball tampering was not an “aberration”, it says, but the fault of a system that celebrates aggression and winning at all costs. “Australian cricket needed this…

Lucy Smallbone at Fiumano Clase Reality TV is not usually associated with artistic excellence, and one might expect any painter volunteering to take part in it to be kissing goodbye to their credibility. Not so in the case of Lucy Smallbone, a contestant on this year’s series of Sky’s Landscape Artist of the Year competition. This show – only her second solo exhibition – brings together a selection of paintings inspired by a recent visit to Chernobyl. The works it contains are less documentary recordings of her trip than a fantastical series of impressions, which blur the boundaries between traditional landscape painting and the colourful expressionism of early 20th century German artists such as Emil Nolde. Smallbone variously depicts Belarusian forests evaporating into an eerie, orange glow; barbed wire rendered…

If you love white burgundy, but baulk at the price, you should “snap up a mouth-watering Mâconnais”, says Jane MacQuitty in The Times. The current crop of Mâconvillages, Pouilly-Fuissé and St-Véran, mostly from “the racy yet ripe 2017 vintage”, is “the best I have tasted”. At Aldi, the 2017 Exquisite Collection Mâcon-Villages, Burgundy (£6.99) is a “light but lively Mâconnais” with sparky lemon zest, quince and yellow apple fruit. Or from Sainsbury’s, the 2016 Taste the Difference Mâcon-Villages, Burgundy (£8) is a “young, fresh, unoaked” example with “juicy star fruit and green apple crunch”. At Tesco, the oak-aged 2016 Finest Viré-Clessé (£11) is a “bold, zesty, citrus gem”. At Waitrose, I’d plump for the “elegant, appley, smoky” 2017 Mâcon-Lugny, Les Charmes (£13.49). Or, if you want to splash out on…

Bingeing on bubbly in Champagne You might feel so bubbly’d out after one of LVMH’s champagne harvest weekends that you reach instinctively for a beer on the Eurostar home – but there’s no doubt these three-day “experiences” are fun, says Lynn Barber in the FT. Guests of the luxury goods group – its brands include Krug, Moët & Chandon and Veuve Cliquot – stay at the recently renovated five-star Royal Champagne Hotel near Champillon while visiting vineyards and cellars, learning how to prune vines and drinking “an awful lot” of champagne. There are dinners in which each course is “paired” with a different wine (the one at the Moët & Chandon Orangerie in Epernay is “fabulous”) and lots of interesting chatter; I learnt, for instance, that for the past five…

WPP: decline and fall? Sir Martin Sorrell, the former boss of WPP, has called the ongoing meltdown at the ad conglomerate “a car crash in slow motion”, said The Observer. After last week’s deep share slump, his successor, Mark Read, “could be forgiven for thinking it feels more like a train wreck”. The City had been expecting to see revenue growth in the third quarter. News of “a huge miss” wiped 14%, or almost £3bn, off shares, taking them “to their lowest level since 2012”. WPP has now formally “lost its mantle” as the world’s most valuable advertising group to its US rival Omnicom. “Signs of trouble were evident long before Read took over.” But with eight major account losses recently – including Ford – “WPP has to stop the…

Everybody knows by now that the UK is blessed with a plethora of international options when it comes to the world of wine. Only recently, I was recommending Chardonnay from Western India, not to mention superb pudding wines that are coming from places as far part as Sweden and Canada. However, it is well to remember what treasures are still to be drunk from the tried and tested locations in Europe and the New World. This selection of half-a-dozen wines from Lea & Sandeman comes solely from France and New Zealand – and there is an abundance of exciting bottles here. Bordeaux has had to focus more on quality in recent years and it is a joy to be reminded of how satisfying a straightforward classical wine can be from…

A disastrous tax on high-end property Alex Brummer Daily Mail Among the more telling stats to emerge from Philip Hammond’s “feel-good” Budget were those showing that the 2014 hike in housing stamp duty has been an “unmitigated disaster”, says Alex Brummer. The move to tap sales of Britain’s most expensive houses, introduced by Hammond’s predecessor George Osborne, has signally failed to raise the expected revenues: income from the tax is forecast to fall by about a billion, to £12.8bn, this year, and “to decline in each of the next five”. Worse, this “prohibitively expensive tax” (which starts at an “eye-watering” 10% on sales of more than £937,000) has created “a huge blockage” in the market, preventing the country’s “strivers” from climbing the ladder. The Osborne hike “flies in the face…

Self-styled JetsetBabe Anna Bey and I are sitting in the bar of the Connaught hotel in Mayfair, sipping glasses of Mâcon-Verzé chardonnay, which she – fresh from a wine-tasting course in Burgundy – has selected and is, very importantly, holding by the stem, as she describes some of her past exploits to me. “So there was one time when I was partying with Paris Hilton on a billionaire’s private yacht – that was supercool,” she recalls. “Or another time I was dating an extremely rich guy, travelling with him everywhere. It was like being in a movie: there were always bodyguards; he’d give you cash in a bag and say, ‘Hey, go shopping’.” “I always say it’s like a video game: you do one level, which is dating a millionaire,…

Mark Sedwill, the UK National Security Adviser, has been appointed Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service. He replaces Sir Jeremy Heywood, who, owing to ill health, is stepping down from the role he held for six years. Sedwill, a veteran of the Foreign Office, has worked closely with Theresa May since 2013, when she made him her permanent secretary at the Home Office. As Cabinet Secretary, he will be her principal adviser. His appointment is unusual in so far as every other cabinet secretary since WWII has had a background in the Treasury.…

59% of Britons support the full legalisation of cannabis – up from 43% in May – while 31% oppose it. 15% of people have used cannabis in the past year. 76% would be willing to consume it if prescribed by a doctor. Populus/The Independent 51% of UK adults sleep for six hours or fewer a night. A mere 17% get the recommended eight hours. Censuswide/The Times 43% of Britons think Islam is incompatible with Western liberal society. 40% would be concerned if a family member married a Muslim and 43% would worry if a mosque were built in their neighbourhood. 58% think Islamophobia is a problem in Britain; 47% believe the country is becoming less tolerant of Muslims. ComRes/The Sunday Times…

Karachi, Pakistan Taliban leader released: Officials in Pakistan have confirmed that they have released from prison a co-founder and former head of the Taliban, who was arrested in Karachi eight years ago following a joint US-Pakistani intelligence operation. Quietly freed from jail last week, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is now believed to be back in Afghanistan. His release, along with that of two other imprisoned senior Taliban, is believed to be the outcome of the tentative dialogue currently under way between the Taliban and the US – and to reflect Pakistan’s efforts to retain influence over any moves towards peace. US diplomats held a second round of talks at the Taliban’s political office in Qatar on 12 October. At the time of his capture, Baradar had been interested in exploring…

“The actor Mark Gatiss posted a video of someone playing music in public last week and remarked that pianos in railway stations – including St Pancras, Leeds and Dundee – are ‘such a simple, life-enhancing joy’. I’m afraid I can’t get on board with it. Such performances are fundamentally attention-seeking, like extravagant public marriage proposals. Worst of all, there’s the inherent whimsy of it all, making me feel I’m trapped inside a John Lewis Christmas advert. Richard Curtis is the one I blame the most. He popularised the idea that we uptight Brits have an inner performer aching to escape. Can we please return to playing pianos in private?” Sathnam Sanghera in The Times…

What does it involve? A fudge concocted by May and agreed by her Cabinet on a hot Friday in July at the PM’s official country residence, the Chequers plan means going one step further than the Norway model. It would end the free movement of EU citizens, and have Britain leave the EU customs union and the single market for services – but keep it in a single market for goods. That would entail accepting Brussels’ rules and standards for all goods and agricultural products. It would enable us to make our own trade deals with countries outside the EU, but to do so, a complicated new customs system would be required: UK customs would apply domestic tariffs for goods intended for the UK, but charge EU tariffs for goods…

What does it involve? If May won’t budge on her Lancaster House “red lines” – the UK is to be outside the single market and the customs union – the only viable option, says Brussels, would be a free-trade agreement like Canada’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) with the EU. This would ensure that nearly all goods could be imported tariff-free, and non-tariff barriers (regulatory checks, quota controls) would be kept to a minimum. It would also put an end to budget payments to the EU and free movement for EU citizens. The “plus” signals that the UK deal would go further than the agreement with Canada, though it’s unclear how far: it might involve making it easier for the UK to sell services to the EU and forging…

A Russian scientist stationed in Antarctica plunged a kitchen knife into a colleague because – it’s alleged – he was fed up with the man telling him the endings of books he was reading. Sergey Savitsky, 55, had spent six months at the isolated Bellingshausen Station on King George Island with Oleg Beloguzov, 52, before the reportedly alcohol-fuelled altercation. Beloguzov was evacuated to Chile with a chest injury, but is not believed to be in danger. Savitsky, who has been charged with attempted murder, has expressed remorse over the attack. Pope Francis has reportedly given his blessing to a Catholic version of Pokémon Go, the mobile gaming sensation. Follow JC Go uses similar GPS and augmented reality technology, but rather than tracking Pokémon, it allows players to capture saints and…

If your car was in an accident, would you prefer it to mow down an old man or a child? Kill four pedestrians or swerve into a wall, killing you? If you’re driving, you make that split-second moral decision; in an era of self-driving cars, engineers will have to programme computers to do so. Now psychologists have tried to get a sense of the public’s moral preferences in such cases, through an online survey in which 40 million people in 223 countries answered a version of the famous trolley problem: would you divert a tram to kill one person, or leave it alone to kill four? It seems we are generally agreed that cars should aim to save the largest number of lives, prioritising the young and valuing humans over…

He has demonised Mexicans who cross the border as rapists and gangsters; he has defended white supremacists and retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda. He urges his supporters to chant threats against people he dislikes, and he recently endorsed as “my kind of guy” a congressman who’d physically assaulted a journalist. President Trump has frequently been accused of endorsing violence and “hate-mongering”, said Janet Daley in The Sunday Telegraph. Yet even when pipe bombs were mailed to 13 of his most prominent critics last week, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros and Robert De Niro among them, he refused to tone down his rhetoric. In an official statement, he made all the right noises, condemning political violence and calling for unity, but his first unscripted response – a day after a pipe bomb…

“It was one of the most evocative, yet strangely incongruous, sights in football,” said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. “The bright blue helicopter, landing in the centre circle.” It arrived at Leicester City’s King Power Stadium after every home game to take Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the club’s Thai owner, back to his Berkshire home. But on Saturday evening, following Leicester’s 1-1 draw with West Ham, the aircraft spiralled out of control. It crashed in a fireball outside the stadium, killing Srivaddhanaprabha and four other people. Since then, Leicester has been in mourning. After all, it was Srivaddhanaprabha who made the Foxes’ remarkable Premier League title in 2016 possible. His arrival at Leicester “was the greatest thing that happened to the city” – and probably “the greatest thing to happen to…

Victims’ justice To The Sunday Times Your report “Man who ‘dreamt up’ a VIP abuse ring on trial” might cause readers to wonder why the man known as “Nick” still has anonymity, while I, being falsely accused of three child murders, have been “named and shamed” for more than three years without any evidence whatsoever. Others have similarly been traduced, and the effect on our families and friends has been monumental. Is it not time for a fair balance in our criminal justice system, whereby “suspects” are not routinely identified until charges are brought? The automatic “believe the victim” policy promoted by our government and national policing establishment has torn up the ancient principle of innocent until proven guilty. This has significant implications for us all. To better protect real…

The Harvey Weinstein scandal blew the lid off the systemic power abuses that have blighted the behind-the-scenes culture in Hollywood for decades. But what about abuses that happen on set, during filming? Last week, HBO – the US TV network that also produces films and miniseries – announced that, from now on, any of its shows that involve sex scenes will employ an “intimacy coordinator”. Ever since the 1933 film Ecstasy, directors have been shooting sex scenes, said Ben Hoyle in The Times. But if audiences find them exciting, actors often find them embarrassing. In the famous love scene between Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in the 1990 film Ghost, both actors apparently felt acutely uncomfortable: Swayze kept turning bright red. Things only became OK, said Demi Moore, when “we…

“Behold the future – here it is,” declared the auctioneer at Christie’s in New York last week, as the bidding began on a slightly blurry portrait of a chubby man in a dark frock coat and white collar. The painting, Portrait of Edmond Belamy, was the first work of art created by artificial intelligence ever sold at auction, said the Daily Mail. It went for $432,500 (£339,000) including fees – far more than a Roy Lichtenstein and an Andy Warhol in the same sale. The portrait was created by the French art collective Obvious, using an algorithm created by Ian Goodfellow, a researcher at Google, and tweaked using code written by other programmers. Obvious fed 15,000 classic portraits through their software, and, once the computer had understood the rules of…

Jill puts Elizabeth in touch with Anna – she will offer an opinion on the appeal. Johnny visits Freddie. Brian apologises to Adam and says he’s done an amazing job taking over the farm. Anna is unable to find grounds for appeal in Freddie’s case and she tells Elizabeth that pursuing it further would waste time and money; none of her reputable colleagues would take the case. Lynda appeals for backstage help for her play and discusses casting. Helen worries about Henry’s nerves with his karate test. Lee reassures him and checks Helen is OK herself. Rex hides his disappointment on finding that Toby has been staying at Pip’s to look after Rosie. Elizabeth grills Johnny on his return from the prison – he tries to be positive, later telling…

3 nights in Aberdeen The 4-star Mercure Ardoe House Hotel & Spa is a 19th century mansion set within 30 acres of countryside. A b&b stay is from £185pp. 01904-717362, superbreak.com. Arrive 30 November. Finland winter break Snuggled up to the shore of Lake Ounasjärvi, stay 3 nights half-board at the Lapland Hotels Hetta, from £833pp. Bristol flights incl. 020-3636 1931, tui.co.uk. Depart 9 December. 5-star Cyprus resort Spend 4 nights half-board at Constantinos the Great, with the Fig Tree beach near by, from £373pp. Birmingham flights incl. 020-8492 6792, olympicholidays.com. Depart 11 December. Discover Indochina Explore Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos on this 11-night tour, from £1,649pp, incl. b&b, excursions and London flights. 0800-368 5017, affordableluxurytravel.co.uk. Depart 8 December.…

Further steep falls in global markets reignited fears that the long bull market may have come to a halt. Wall Street led the moves downwards, as Amazon and Google shares were both clobbered when the companies undershot analyst forecasts. The Nasdaq tech index overall is set for its worst monthly loss since November 2008. Traders blamed a confluence of factors, from higher interest rates to trade conflicts and fears of a further downward lurch in the Chinese economy. But many professed to be mystified as to the “smoking gun” behind the sell-off. The “Faang” tech stocks rallied on Wednesday, buoyed by strong results from Facebook and a broader Wall Street rally. Chancellor Philip Hammond delivered the last Budget before Brexit, signalling a retreat from austerity with giveaways including personal tax…

Elon Musk Things are finally “looking up for Elon and his friends”, said Engadget.com. Despite a series of “very public” gaffes and scandals at Tesla – mostly springing from the antics of its erratic founder – the electric carmaker has blown away expectations with a $312m quarterly profit (only the third in its history). Shares have bounced back strongly, trouncing the short-sellers betting on Tesla’s demise. Musk himself might have “spun out of control”, but sales of the Model 3 have been motoring, said The Guardian. Having been stripped of the chairmanship by regulators, Musk, 47, has announced he no longer has a job title. “I’m now the Nothing of Tesla,” he noted in a tweet. He paid tribute to the firm’s unusually devoted customer base, whose loyalty, he said,…