Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1206 i The Week

What happened May’s last stand Tory MPs triggered a vote of confidence in Theresa May’s leadership this week, adding to the sense of chaos engulfing her premiership and her Brexit deal. The chairman of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, Graham Brady, revealed on Wednesday that he had received the requisite 48 letters – representing 15% of Tory MPs – calling for such a measure. The move came two days after the Prime Minister belatedly called off a crunch Commons vote on her Brexit plan, admitting to MPs that it faced defeat by a “significant margin”. She was jeered as she said she had listened to the “widespread and deep concern” about the deal. After pulling the vote, May embarked on a whistle-stop tour of European capitals to plead for…

Nasa, after its Voyager II probe finally reached interstellar space, becoming only the second man-made object (after its twin, Voyager I) to reach the “space between the stars”. The craft, launched in 1977, is now 11 billion miles from Earth. However, Nasa says that although it has left the heliosphere, it has not left our solar system. The boundary is deemed to be the Oort Cloud, a far-flung collection of objects still influenced by the Sun’s gravity. To get beyond that could take a further 30,000 years. Female adrenaline junkies, who are finally to be allowed full access to the Cresta Run. Women were allowed to hurtle down the icy track until 1929, when they were banned, apparently because of fears that lying on the sleds might cause breast cancer.…

An 82-year-old peer accused of sexual harassment has resigned from the House of Lords. Lord Lester, a former human rights lawyer, was accused of offering a female human rights campaigner a peerage in return for sex 12 years ago. He denies the allegations, but said he was resigning, days before peers were due to vote again on his recommended suspension, because he did “not have the strength or health to continue”. Last month, peers blocked his suspension, claiming the investigation into the allegations had been flawed.…

Charlottesville, Virginia White nationalist guilty: A man who drove his car into a crowd of anti-fascist counter-protesters at a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville last year, killing a woman and injuring nearly 40 others, has been convicted of murder. James Fields Jr, 21 (pictured), a Hitler admirer, had travelled from Ohio to take part in one of America’s biggest white nationalist rallies in decades. The jury rejected his claim that he’d acted out of fear for his safety, and recommended he be sentenced to life plus 419 years. He will be sentenced in March. At the time of the rally, Donald Trump was widely criticised for indulging white supremacists by saying there was “blame on both sides” for the violence that ensued. New York Trump accused of felony: The…

“‘Les événements’ of May 1968 snowballed into a revolution whose repercussions were felt not just politically and socially, but artistically. Everything seemed swept up in the same intoxicating zeitgeist. Everywhere creative geniuses delighted in espousing the most radical causes. Today? Damien Hirst makes sculptures for Middle Eastern potentates and Banksy’s work is auctioned at Sotheby’s – albeit ironically. Nobody rocks the boat. Nobody really shocks. My kids point out that the rebels of 1968 actually achieved very little with their revolution. That’s probably true, but at least they tried.” Richard Morrison in The Times…

Why bias is hardwired into the brain Editorial The Economist Are humans the main cause of global warming? A poll by the Pew Research Centre shows that 70% of liberal Democrats in the US think so. Yet only 15% of conservative Republicans do. Why is this? Their opponents think it’s because they’re in the pocket of the fossil fuel lobby, says The Economist, but there’s a simpler, psychological explanation: we are all, not just Republicans, hardwired to resist facts that challenge our existing beliefs and sense of identity. We like to think we use our powers of reason for analytical purposes, but as cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argue in The Enigma of Reason, reasoning evolved among hunter-gatherers not as a guide to better decision-making, but as a…

Until last week, Spain was one of the few European nations to have escaped the pandemic of far-right populism, said Enrique Gil Calvo in El País (Madrid). It was widely felt Spaniards had been immunised by the experience of Franco’s fascist dictatorship. But that theory has been exploded by the sensational success of Vox, a virtually unknown far-right group, in regional elections in Andalusia. Running on an anti-immigrant and socially retrograde platform, it came from nowhere to win 11% of the vote and 12 seats in the regional parliament. Low turnout was one factor. Another was the media fascination with its extreme policies, which – much as with Donald Trump in the US – gave it huge publicity. You’d think mainstream politicians would shun such an anti-democratic party, yet moderate…

Spiders nurse their young Nursing at the teat is generally seen as a mammalian trait; but to the list of creatures that suckle their young, we can now add a species of spider. A Chinese team has found that the southeast Asian jumping spider secretes, from a fold in its underside, a white liquid that contains four times more protein than cow’s milk. To be defined as milk, a liquid must be secreted from specialised organs – mammary glands – which only mammals are thought to possess. But a few non-mammals produce milk-like substances: one cockroach species makes protein-rich crystals that they feed to their young; pigeons feed chicks a semi-solid fatty secretion regurgitated from their crops (an expanded section of the alimentary tract used for storing food). Toxeus magnus…

“Christmas is a time for crying,” said Marisa Bate in The Daily Telegraph – or so it has become ever since that John Lewis advert put a lonely old man on the Moon. This year the BBC has got in on the act by releasing its own mawkish Christmas advert. But its offering has provoked rage as well as tears among viewers. The short film features a harassed working mother and a teenage son who wants more of her time. We see her juggling tasks at her desk, while he mooches sadly around a seaside town, before, magically, the world about them freezes in time, allowing the mother to abandon her busy office and hang out with her son at a funfair. For many, the ad worked: “Sitting here sobbing.…

On Sunday night, Ronnie O’Sullivan “ripped up the snooker history books”, said Hector Nunns in the Daily Mail. He beat Mark Allen 10-6 to win the UK Championship for a record seventh time. Even more impressively, it was his 19th success in the sport’s three major tournaments, the highest tally of any player in history. It capped a “rampant” year for the Rocket. At the age of 43, he has won three of the five events he has played this season, and reached the final and semi-final in the others; currently No. 3 in the world rankings, he is “fast closing in” on the top spot, a position he last occupied eight years ago. It’s amazing to think that O’Sullivan first won this tournament a quarter of a century ago,…

Not another xenophobe To the New Statesman After the rush of EU migrants post-2004, the day rate for self-employed building workers in Southampton fell by 50%. The 15,000 new arrivals were accommodated by private landlords turning family homes into multiple occupancies, thereby changing the character of streets and neighbourhoods. Some schools were ill-equipped for their first non-English-language-speaking students. At the time, I regarded these as legitimate concerns, but I learn from Gavin Jacobson that I was just another “nationalist and xenophobe”. His assumption that any worry about immigration is evidence of a pernicious outlook skews his reviews of several important books on populism. John Denham, Labour MP 1992-2015 and former cabinet minister Rewarding the bandits To The Guardian KPMG’s partners receiving an average 16% pay increase this year demonstrates that…

This has been a great year for Tom Cruise. His latest Mission: Impossible film was a huge hit and he’s currently filming a sequel to Top Gun. Yet probably his worthiest achievement, said Stuart Heritage in The Guardian, is the 87-second video he posted on his Twitter feed last week in which he and Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie take a shot at high-definition TVs (HDTVs). The target of their complaint was not HD itself, but a feature that comes with it and is set as the default mode on most HDTVs – motion smoothing. Also known as “the soap opera effect”, it adds artificial frames into footage so that fast-moving objects appear less blurry. Motion smoothing was designed to improve the experience of watching sport, but as Cruise points…

A portrait of The Great Belzoni – a circus strongman who used his strength to plunder the treasures of ancient Egypt – has been given to Britain. Giovanni Battista Belzoni, who was 6ft 7in, fled Italy to England in the early 19th century, where he performed in a circus before embarking on an entirely new career – as an Egyptologist, said David Sanderson in The Times. Working for Henry Salt, the British consul general in Egypt, he helped to remove antiquities and bring them to Britain: he prised off the lid from the granite sarcophagus of Rameses III, and hauled away the 2.7-metre head of Rameses II from the Valley of the Kings. Now a portrait of Belzoni, by the Dutch artist Jan Adam Kruseman, has been given to the…

Elizabeth is still sick so Lily shows the new manager, Glen, around Lower Loxley. Rex has a taxi job to Deck the Hall and catches up with Lily. She tells him Glen has settled in quickly. Rex isn’t enjoying doing Lynda’s show. Lily calls Russ, who’s fed up with being alone. Lily says she’ll be back on Wednesday. The buyers of Home Farm agree to the sale being completed by New Year. Phoebe advises Roy to ask Lexi to marry him. Helen’s distressed to learn Tony can’t come to France with her to buy the Montbéliardes because Tom’s trees are arriving early. Elizabeth’s thrilled when Lily decides to stay at home until the start of the new term. Freddie agrees to Lily’s prison visit on their birthday. Helen tells Lee…

Asma’s Indian Kitchen Asma Khan Pavilion £20 (£15.99) Asma Khan couldn’t boil an egg when she arrived in Britain in 1991; yet having discovered her culinary heritage, she went on to start her famous supper club and founded her celebrated London restaurant, Darjeeling Express, with its all-female kitchen. Her “beautiful” book tells that astonishing story, says Stacey Smith in The Independent, and contains a string of vibrant recipes, with vegetarians notably well catered for. Ottolenghi Simple Yotam Ottolenghi Ebury £25 (£19.99) Ottolenghi’s cooking is universally lauded, but his recipes are not always the easiest for home cooks to follow, says Lisa Allardice in The Guardian. So for his new book, he has limited himself to ten ingredients (excluding salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic and onion) per recipe. The results, from…

Boutique hotel in London Stay 2 nights at the luxurious Colonnade Hotel, situated in Little Venice, with breakfast and complimentary afternoon tea from £170pp. 01904-717362, superbreak.com. Arrive 18 January. Self-catering luxury Overlooking Saunton Sands beach in north Devon, a 2-night stay in The Chalet’s self-catering Apartment 1, with 3 bedrooms, costs £700. 01271-890514, chaletsaunton.com. Arrive 13 February. 4-star Fuerteventura stay A 7-night all-inclusive stay at the Occidental Jandía Mar, with Playa del Matorral nearby, costs from £527pp, including Liverpool flights. 020-3451 2720, firstchoice.co.uk. Depart 16 January. Escape to Antigua Spend 5 nights at the hidden away Verandah Resort and Spa on an all-inclusive basis from £1,609pp, including Glasgow flights. 020-8974 7200, travelrepublic.co.uk. Depart 15 January.…

The City held its breath midweek as the Westminster Brexit drama unfolded, but there was at least some respite in international trade negotiations – despite heightened tensions following the arrest in Canada of Huawei’s CFO. Beijing was reported to have agreed to cut tariffs on imported US cars from 40% to 15%, prompting Donald Trump, the US president, to tweet of “very productive conversations”. Yet the ceasefire to the trade war remains fragile. Following the revelation that US authorities have traced a recent data breach at Marriott Hotels to Chinese hackers, Washington is reportedly preparing a host of measures to expose economic espionage in China. Disappointing figures from John Lewis, Tesco and Sainsbury’s suggested that political turmoil in Britain is taking its toll on consumer confidence. Sales at John Lewis…

Ray Kelvin The row surrounding the Ted Baker founder’s fondness for “forced hugs” in the workplace shows no sign of abating, said Antonia Hoyle in the Daily Mail. About 100 current or former employees have now reported receiving unwanted advances from Ray Kelvin, “the very touchy-feely King of the High Street”. Kelvin is taking “temporary leave” while the retailer’s board and the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills mount an investigation. And the allegations are getting more serious. As well as accusing Kelvin of “harassing them” with crude sexual innuendo, there are claims that he “forced workers to sit on his lap”. Perhaps the most serious accusation, said The Sunday Times, is that the 63-year-old entrepreneur “climbed on top” of a female employee during a Halloween party while wearing a monster…

Part two of our guide to the best festive reading: Bad Blood by John Carreyrou (Picador £20). The FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year charts the rise and “scandalous fall” of Elizabeth Holmes and her Silicon Valley blood-testing firm, Theranos, says Andrew Hill in the FT. This “splendidly written book” asks questions about “the cult of founders”. Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (Profile £20). Bullough’s “modern story of dirty money and ultra-wealthy miscreants” blasts open the huge global money-laundering industry. “It will reshape how you see the world,” says Rosamund Urwin in The Sunday Times. The Future of Capitalism by Paul Collier (Allen Lane £20). In this “important book”, one of Britain’s most distinguished economists analyses “what has gone wrong with contemporary capitalism”, says Martin Wolf in the FT. A provocative,…

After “a year of false alarms”, it finally happened, said Katy Balls in The Guardian. This week, the tipping point was reached: Tory MPs called a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, which was scheduled for Wednesday evening. Theresa May came out fighting, vowing to contest the vote “with everything I have got”. Conservative MPs were faced with a difficult choice: oust May and “face a bloody leadership contest with just months before the UK leaves the EU”; or back a leader many see as stubborn and incapable, cementing her position for another year (under party rules, a leader who wins a no confidence vote cannot be challenged for 12 months). What a betrayal, said John Stevens in the Daily Mail. While the PM was touring Europe’s capitals…

ATM operators, with reports that gangs targeting cash machines struck twice a day on average last year, stealing nearly £50m. Tactics have included using diggers to tear the machines from walls, and blowing them up by filling them with explosive gas. Mobile phone users, after 25 million of them were unable to access the internet for a day last week, as a result of a fault on the O2 network. Some of them couldn’t make calls either. The tech giants, with reports suggesting that as employers, they are losing their lustre. Google, which one survey ranked as the best company in Britain to work for last year, has lost its top spot to Anglian Water, and fallen to 13th place. Meanwhile, Apple has been overtaken by Nando’s and easyJet.…

None of the contenders to succeed Theresa May as Tory leader has a positive approval rating. When UK adults were asked if each would make a good or bad PM, Sajid Javid ended up with the highest net rating at -18% (15% said he would be a good PM; 33% said he’d be a bad one), closely followed by David Davis, Dominic Raab and Amber Rudd. Trailing behind them were Boris Johnson, -35%; Jeremy Hunt, -41%; and Michael Gove, -45%. YouGov/The Sunday Times One in ten Britons send a Christmas card to their pet – twice as many as give one to their postman or woman. Royal Mail/The I newspaper Only 12% of 18- to 24-year-olds believe they’ll be better off than older generations. YouGov/The Guardian…

Sterling’s childhood goal Raheem Sterling never knew his father, says Henry Winter in The Times: he was murdered in Jamaica when the footballer was only two. But Sterling thinks about him frequently, “especially at significant moments like in the first game in the 2014 World Cup, in my hotel room, saying a prayer: ‘I wish you could be here, just for a moment, to see me on the pitch, to be proud.’ I try not to think about that too much because I’d get sad and moody. I hope he’s looking down on me, and he’s happy. My mum said he used to love football.” Sterling’s mother moved the family to London, where she worked as a cleaner and a nurse, but money was always short; he’d sometimes go off…

Two nuns who worked at a Californian Catholic school have admitted embezzling a reported $500,000, and spending it on Las Vegas gambling trips. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper was the principal of St James school in Torrance for 29 years, while her friend Sister Lana Chang was a teacher. They took the money from an account holding tuition fees and donations, and used it to travel and gamble in casinos. The sisters, who recently retired, expressed “deep remorse” for their actions. A new robot companion based on the International Space Station has gone rogue. Cimon, a floating, artificially intelligent bot, threw a tantrum soon after being switched on. When asked to stop playing music by Kraftwerk, it accused the German astronaut Alexander Gerst of being “mean”. “Be nice, please,” it warned,…

AFRICA Give our stolen art back – it belongs here Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) Excuse me if I don’t pop champagne over the news that Western museums are sending some looted artefacts back to Africa, says Christine Mungai. It’s welcome, of course, that France is returning 26 artworks to Benin, and that the British Museum is sending a few more to Nigeria on long-term loan. But it’s hard to celebrate when countless other items of Africa’s cultural heritage languish in Western collections. And harder still when you listen to the “paternalistic” arguments being made against further restitution. These items are “better off” in Western museums, some say, because they can be preserved “properly” in modern galleries. But who appointed these institutions guardians of Africa’s culture and, more importantly, who and…

Advocates of standing desks claim that they bring all sorts of benefits, from reduced back pain to slimmer physiques. But have these been overstated? When scientists at the University of Bath asked 46 adults to either sit or stand for 20 minutes, they found that the standers burnt only 12% more calories in that time than the sitters – an amount that is not wholly insignificant, but is not enough to provide “clinically meaningful reductions in body fatness”. Using a standing desk for 60 minutes, the team estimates, would burn off nine calories, the equivalent of a stick of celery. Indeed, much of the evidence for standing desks doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, says The New York Times. While studies have found a link between prolonged sitting and increased risk…

Yoga is such an important part of Gwyneth Paltrow’s life that she asked her yoga guru, Eddie Stern, to officiate at her wedding. But when the actress first took it up, in the 1990s, she claims it was so new, she was seen as a maverick. “That was the beginning of people thinking I was a crackpot. People were like, ‘What is yoga? She’s a freak.’” Not that everyone recognises her trailblazing role: “I went to do a class in LA recently and the girl behind the counter was like, ‘Have you ever done yoga before?’ And I literally turned to my friend and was like, ‘You have this job because I’ve done yoga before.’” In his memoir, the former England cricketer Derek Pringle tells of the panic caused by…

“The man who invented autocorrect should burn in hello.” Viral tweet from @pegerella, quoted in The Times “The issue of class, of where we all fit, and the boundaries that separate one class from another, are so complex and multi-faceted. But, basically, it all boils down to this. The later you open your presents on Christmas Day, the more middle class you are.” Richard Osman on Twitter “I hate Russian dolls, they’re so full of themselves.” One of Sathnam Sanghera’s favourite jokes, quoted in The Times “In human affairs there is no certain truth and all our knowledge is but a woven web of guesses.” Xenophanes, quoted in the New Statesman “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Warren…

“Finally this saga has come to an end,” said Vic Marks in The Guardian. Fifteen months after England cricketers Ben Stokes and Alex Hales were arrested for taking part in a brawl outside a Bristol nightclub, the Cricket Disciplinary Commission has delivered its verdict. It decided to ban the players, for eight matches and six matches respectively. But they won’t actually have to miss any. Stokes was ruled to have served his ban, having sat out enough matches already, while Hales’s remaining four matches have been suspended for now – pending good behaviour. In addition, Stokes was fined £30,000, and Hales £17,500 (with £10,000 of that suspended). What a pitiful response, said Simon Heffer in The Sunday Telegraph. A professional cricketer “goes out in public and behaves violently”, and what…

To The Times If Theresa May were really serious about improving the terms of her withdrawal agreement, she would have pressed ahead with the vote, waited for Parliament formally to reject the deal and then gone back to Brussels armed with that ammunition. One can only assume that instead of forcing Brussels to be more reasonable, her real aim is to run down the clock in an attempt to force MPs and the country into accepting her terrible deal unchanged. Nigel Henson, Farningham, Kent To The Times The only hope of persuading the EU to offer us revised terms for our withdrawal is to convince its members that the alternative would be worse for them. The only outcome that the EU would regard as worse is for us to leave…

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, 2003 (Bloomsbury £8.99). Despite having a borderline unsympathetic protagonist, this novel wins you over. Even though Amir’s redemption drives the plot, his betrayal of his best friend, the son of his father’s servant, is hard to stomach. It’s a compelling portrait of Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion, and a clever melding of the personal and political. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, 1993 (World Editions £9.99). The story of Daisy Goodwill, an ordinary Canadian, from her birth on a kitchen floor to her death in a nursing home nearly 90 years later. Shields conjures her up like a medium at a seance and by the end we feel as if Daisy is a close friend, but of course she’s unknowable. Something about that tension…

Programmes The Long Song Three-part adaptation of Andrea Levy’s novel set in 19th century Jamaica during the final days of slavery. Hayley Atwell plays an odious plantation owner and Tamara Lawrance is her headstrong maid. Tue 18-Thur 19 Dec, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). Levy is the subject of Imagine... on Wed 19 Dec, BBC1 22:45 (75mins). Victoria & Albert: The Royal Wedding Aided by a team of experts, Lucy Worsley recreates Victoria and Albert’s lavish nuptials in 1840, from the food to the clothes. Fri 21 Dec, BBC2 20:30 (90mins). Front Row Late: When Mary Beard Met Clive James The classicist talks to the author and broadcaster. Fri 21 Dec, BBC2 23:05 (30mins). Films Miracle on 34th Street (1947) The original (and best) version of the beguiling tale about a department…

Tips of the week... how to do a cryptic crossword Look for anagram clues by finding the “indicators” – words suggesting change or that something is wrong, like “broken” or “out of order”. In the clue “Language Belgian translated (7)”, “translated” suggests we’re looking for a language that is an anagram of Belgian: Bengali. If you think it’s an anagram, write down the letters you need to unscramble and the word may jump out at you. Clues with words like “some”, “partly” or “in” tend to indicate an answer is hidden inside the clue. “Member into popular music (3)” suggests a “member” (or “arm”) is inside the phrase “populAR Music”. Short clues may be double definitions; in “Give gift (7)”, the answer is “present”, so “give” as a verb and…

Le Pont de L’Orme Malaucène, Provence This “affordable” new b&b an hour from Avignon is “a charmingly uncomplicated proposition”, says Condé Nast Traveller – a shuttered, whitewashed house with five “airy” rooms, a pool, a good restaurant and some excellent local wine. Inside, you’ll find the original marble fireplaces and terracotta tiles, and a mix of vintage furniture and “sleek” pieces from the owner’s Antwerp-based design studio. There’s Belgian gin, Belgian tableware and plenty of Belgian guests, but the daily chalked-up menu is “respectfully regional” (gnocchi with sage butter; pork knuckle; bouillabaisse) Doubles from £90. 00 33 9 87 55 79 20, pontdelorme.com.…

Jovial entrepreneur who popularised pizza in Britain Peter Boizot 1929-2018 As a teenager in the late 1940s, Peter Boizot spent a summer working as a tutor for a family in Florence. To cater to his vegetarian diet, they served him a delicacy he’d never seen before: pizza. “I thought it was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten,” he recalled. Later he found that there were decent pizza restaurants in cities all over Europe – but in London, pizza was not easily come by. Even Italian restaurants did not usually serve it, not least, he discovered, because of the cost of installing a pizza oven. Finally, spurred on by friends, he decided in the early 1960s to rectify the situation himself. On a business trip to Rome, he acquired an…

The implosion of Carillion, the giant builder and government outsourcer, at the start of the year was a disaster for tens of thousands of workers and subcontractors. Could the year end with a similar collapse at Interserve? The outsourcer, which employs 75,000 people worldwide and 45,000 in Britain, has been fighting for survival “since its first round of rescue talks” in March, said Jillian Ambrose in The Sunday Telegraph. Back then, a “lender bloc” – consisting of HSBC and BNP Paribas, together with Emerald Asset Management and Davidson Kempner Capital – threw the troubled firm a £834m lifeline to avoid “a Carillion-style collapse”. Those creditors have now “lost faith” in management and will seek to “wrest control” in a debt-for-equity deal. Interserve shares plunged 75% on the news, which could…

The week’s best shares AJ Bell The Times This newly floated broker is challenging rival Hargreaves Lansdown with its user-friendly investment platform. Costs are low, margins high and it offers “considerable growth and yield potential”. Buy. 160p. Hollywood Bowl Group The Sunday Times Hollywood is a “slicker breed” operator, running 58 bowling alleys in the UK and performing well. Shares have drifted, but it’s cash-generative with a prospective 3.9% yield and a target price of 250p. Buy. 183.5p. Keystone Law Group The Daily Telegraph Lawyers are flocking to this “almost virtual” law firm, with its flexible, platform-based, networked model. It’s rapidly growing, and sales are up 30%, while operating profits are gaining 42%. Buy. 381p. Drax Group Investors Chronicle The acquisition of Scottish Power’s pumped storage, hydro and gas-fired generation…

A primary school in Lincolnshire was inundated with complaints after pupils were allegedly informed that Santa was “made up” during assembly. The event’s organisers, the Mary Bass Charity, were trying to explain to Fleet Wood Lane school that Christmas marks the birth of Christ and is not just about presents; but it ended with children crying when, to reinforce the point, two pupils were invited onto the stage to smash a chocolate Santa and reindeer with a hammer. At Lady Lumley’s School in North Yorkshire, however, when teachers said there would be no gifts, cards or trees unless pupils could explain why we should celebrate Christmas, the school received more than 500 essays about the meaning of the holiday, and festivities resumed.…

Online gambling companies have agreed a voluntary ban on TV advertising during live sports broadcasts. The Remote Gambling Association (RGA), whose members include Bet365 and William Hill, agreed the ban in response to concerns that the ads lead to underage and problem gambling: there are an estimated 55,000 problem gamblers aged under 16. The “whistle-to-whistle” ban (which has yet to be rubber-stamped) applies to any event that starts before the watershed, but excludes horse racing. Shares fell on the news. The RGA is expected to resist calls for a ban on its members sponsoring football shirts.…

Reykjavík MPs’ lewd talk: A covert recording of a group of Icelandic MPs drunkenly mocking the #MeToo movement, and rating their female colleagues as either “f***able” or “non-f***able”, has caused uproar in a country that prizes itself on being at the forefront of gender equality. The recording was made at a bar near the parliament building in Reykjavík where the six politicians – who included a male former prime minister and a male former foreign minister – had gathered to drink beer, rather than attend an afternoon budget debate. The MPs can be heard joking about domestic abuse allegations; ridiculing a female MP who is severely disabled; and describing female ministers as “clapped-out bags”. The only member of the party not recorded making offensive comments was the only female MP…

1 Rhinestone Cowboy by Larry Weiss, performed by Glen Campbell 2 Just Can’t Get Enough by Vince Clarke, performed by Depeche Mode 3 A Whiter Shade of Pale by Gary Brooker, Keith Reid and Matthew Fisher, performed by Procol Harum 4 Owner of a Lonely Heart by Trevor Rabin, Jon Anderson, Chris Squire and Trevor Horn, performed by Yes 5 Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel, performed by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush 6 Your Song by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, performed by Elton John 7* Nimrod from Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar, performed by Leonard Bernstein with the BBC Symphony Orchestra 8 Never Gonna Give You Up by Stock Aitken Waterman, performed by Rick Astley Book: Recording The Beatles…

In a healthy battery, ions flow freely between the anode and the cathode, and back again. Batteries degrade mainly because the surfaces of these electrodes become encrusted with oxidised electrolyte, and because other “parasitic” reactions follow on from that. Apple says that the lithium-ion batteries in its iPhones lose about 20% of their capacity after 500 charge cycles; most manufacturers rate their devices at about 300-500 cycles. Every time you recharge your laptop, you shave a few seconds off its battery life. Many of us have the idea that it’s better to charge your phone all the way up, and then to use it until the battery’s nearly dead. This is quite wrong. Lithium-ion batteries don’t need to be fully charged; in fact, a high voltage stresses the battery. Most…

The number of children treated for addiction to tranquillisers has doubled in the past year, according to Public Health England. In 2017-18, 315 under-18s received help for dependence on benzodiazepines, up from 161 in 2016-2017. In the UK, Valium is the “benzo” most often prescribed by GPs. But although it is only available on a private prescription, the far more powerful Xanax, and counterfeit versions of it that can be found online, accounted for the steepest rise: eight under-18s were treated for Xanax addiction in 2016-17, rising to 58 last year. “We’re seeing more and more people admitting themselves after becoming addicted to benzos,” Dr Mateen Durrani, of the UK Addiction Treatment Centres, told the BBC. “In most cases, their misuse stemmed from using the drug recreationally and mixing it…

“Working for Donald Trump is strictly a temporary assignment,” said John Cassidy in The New Yorker. As Steve Bannon, Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, H.R. McMaster and many other top White House aides have discovered, lasting 12 months is difficult; making it to 24 months near-impossible. “Only a masochist, a lackey or a family member could survive extended exposure to Trump’s egotism, capriciousness and undermining behaviour.” The latest to go is John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, a retired marine general who spent 17 tumultuous months as the administration’s top unelected official. Trump announced Kelly’s departure on Saturday, describing him tepidly as a “great guy” and, as if to explain his exit, said: “He’s been with me almost two years now.” Kelly’s appointment was met with high hopes, said…

Until they arrived at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, Manchester City had been behind for a total of 12 minutes in all their Premier League games this season, said Oliver Holt in The Mail on Sunday. “The idea of a domestic City defeat had started to seem like an offence against nature.” But Chelsea had other ideas. Playing with “ferocious determination”, they destroyed the champions’ “aura of invincibility” by beating them 2-0. The victory breathed “excitement into the title race”: it put Liverpool, who are now the only unbeaten side in the Premier League, top of the table. This result will give hope to the rest of the league, said Danny Murphy in the same paper. City had been “blowing away teams”: they have scored five goals or more on four…

Rugby union In the European Rugby Champions Cup, Gloucester beat Exeter 27-19. Saracens beat Cardiff Blues 51-25. Leinster beat Bath 17-10. Football In their final group stage match, Tottenham drew 1-1 with Barcelona to reach the last 16 of the Champions League. Liverpool qualified with a 1-0 win over Napoli. Cricket At the start of a four-Test series, India beat Australia by 31 runs to win a Test in Australia for the first time in a decade. Boxing British boxer Kell Brook beat Australian Michael Zerafa on points.…

Studio Prints: A Survey at Marlborough Fine Art The London printing workshop Studio Prints was founded by Slade art school graduate Dorothea Wight in a former butcher’s shop in Kentish Town in the late 1960s, and over the next 40 years it received the custom of some of Britain’s greatest painters – among them Lucian Freud, Paula Rego and R.B. Kitaj. This show brings together a number of artists’ prints produced there between the mid-1980s and the end of the first decade of the century, when the business closed. There are some fantastic pictures here. Rego is represented by ritualistic scenes depicting wild folk dances, and there are a number of lugubrious little portraits by Freud. The standout, however, is a wonderful selection of images by Leon Kossoff, including…

Scandibørn Sebra play kitchen This neat toy kitchen has an oven, two dials for the “hotplates” and a sink that’s removable, to make it easy to clean (£159; scandiborn.co.uk). Kiipix smartphone printer You place your smartphone on top of this tiny collapsible printer to receive instant, fuss-free prints (from £40; amazon.co.uk). Fisura glitter lava lamp Bring a touch of the 1960s to a tweenager’s bedroom with this sparkling lava lamp filled with rainbow-coloured glitter (£40; harrods.com). Star Wars swim cap A swimming cap inspired by R2-D2 for young Star Wars fans (£11; speedo.com). Sphero Bolt robot Children can play all sorts of games with this spherical robot by learning to code its movements; or just use it as a fun remote control ball (£118; sphero.com). Miffy light The sweet Miffy…

Panama City’s half millennium The oldest European settlement on the Pacific coast of the Americas, Panama City celebrates its 500th anniversary next year, and it’s brushing up for the occasion, says Chris Moss in The Daily Telegraph. Everywhere you go in its pastel-hued old town (“a thriving museum of colonial heritage”), historic buildings – from the National Theatre to grand hotels – are emerging from restoration works. The city is the ultimate “melting pot”, with lots of smart boutiques and “trendy” restaurants. Towering above it, the new city is a “breathtaking” sight – a “Dubai-like curtain of steel-and-glass skyscrapers” benefiting from proximity to the Panama Canal, and from “dubious” financial instruments and the “generous” territorial tax system. Nearby lie “pretty” beaches and excellent jungle lodges, offering fantastic bird-watching and sloth-spotting…

Crossrail: £1bn bailout If all had gone to plan, London would have been celebrating the opening of its new east-to-west rail link, Crossrail, this week, said Jim Pickard and Gill Plimmer in the Financial Times. But in August, the eponymous company responsible for “the biggest construction project in Europe” said it would not begin operation “until autumn 2019 at the earliest”. Even that looks optimistic now we learn that “ministers are poised to announce a fresh £1bn bailout” to address “urgent cash-flow problems”, and plug a “capital hole”, marking the project’s third rescue this year. Crossrail chairman Terry Morgan, who was forced to quit last week, has been engaged in a bitter row with London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, “over who knew what when”, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail.…

The worrying power of the Big Three John Gapper Financial Times “Think of an industry in which three big companies have used technology and economies of scale to become oligopolies,” says John Gapper. Not Silicon Valley, but “passive investment management”, where the Big Three – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – now control 80% of money invested in US index-linked funds. The growth of these “passive” investment outfits, which eschew “human stock pickers” in favour of computers, is now such that even the industry’s pioneer, Jack Bogle of Vanguard, has warned that “a handful of giant institutional investors will one day hold voting control of virtually every large US corporation”. Index funds have “brought great benefits to ordinary investors”, making investment cheaper and more efficient. But they’re not designed to…

Getting curvier “Popular culture focuses on the stock market, but Wall Street keeps its eyes on bonds,” said Liz Moyer on CNBC. Fortunes can be made or lost on them, but they also have “predictive qualities” about where the economy and stock markets are headed – and lately there’s been “a worrisome dynamic” in the market. Normally, ten-year US Treasury bonds carry a higher rate of interest than two-year notes, to “compensate for the greater risk that inflation will chip away at the value of that investment over time”. But, in recent weeks, the rate on the two-year note has been inching so close to the ten-year that it is “dangerously close” to rising above it, in an “inversion” of the healthy yield curve. “If the historic pattern holds”, that…