Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1213 i The Week

What happened Back to the backstop Theresa May travelled to Belfast and Brussels this week as part of her ongoing effort to salvage her Brexit deal. The purpose of the first trip was to offer fresh reassurance about the Government’s commitment to avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. The second trip was intended to seek late changes to the exit deal that might help her get it through Parliament. In a vote last week, MPs instructed her to replace with “alternative arrangements” its most contentious element: the backstop plan under which the UK would remain bound to the EU customs union unless a trade deal is reached that keeps the soft border in Ireland. Although the German leader Angela Merkel said the “riddle” of the Irish border…

Washington DC State of the Union: President Trump used his State of the Union address this week to announce his second summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to take place in Vietnam on 27-28 February. In the speech themed “Choosing Greatness”, he also reiterated his intention to build a wall on the US-Mexico border, and warned that “ridiculous partisan investigations” could damage the “economic miracle” being wrought in the US. Afterwards, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat leader of the House, tweeted that: “It will take days to fact-check all the misrepresentations that [the president] made.” Separately, Trump faced renewed criticism of his work ethic, after leaked documents revealed that more than half his working day is taken up with unstructured “executive time”. The right-wing commentator Ann Coulter (who has grown…

“Nowadays many of us seem to treat failure as a kind of success. Failure is great! Celebrate failure! Fail Again! Fail Better! The Power of Fail! A recent blog post by Jessica Butcher of Blippar [a tech firm that went bust last year] quotes Teddy Roosevelt and makes going into administration sound like something out of The Iliad. When people started owning their failures back in the 1990s I was all for it. I’m fine with lessons being learnt and shared. I understand the need to take risks. It is the repositioning of failure as a kind of success that gets me. ‘Sorry I screwed up’ has become, ‘Here are the learnings that have added value to Brand Me!’” Rhymer Rigby in The Times…

Mapping the sum of all our parts Robert Plomin The Spectator Pay about £500 and get your DNA sequenced. That’s the service that Genomics England, a company owned by the Department of Health, is now offering and the news has caused quite a stir. Will the data stay private? Won’t this create a two-tier health system? The critics are wrong, says Robert Plomin. The NHS is taking the first steps to ensure genome sequencing will be available to all. As it should be. It’s not just about identifying the tiny fraction of people who have a rare gene that increases their risk of, say, Alzheimer’s. The genetic risk for most disorders arises from tens of thousands of DNA differences, and the big advance in DNA research has been to sum…

Theia’s crash kindled life on Earth It’s long been known that when Earth was formed, it did not have the ingredients necessary for life. So where did these “volatiles” – elements such as carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and hydrogen that are naturally depleted on rocky planets in our solar system – come from? One theory is that they were delivered by comets and meteorites long after the Earth formed (the so-called late veneer theory). But new research suggests that, in fact, they arrived far earlier, some 4.4 billion years ago, when a Mars-sized planet named Theia is believed to have slammed into the proto-Earth. This violent impact threw up vast amounts of debris, some of which coalesced to form the Moon, while other bits of Theia were incorporated into the young…

“Is this perhaps the next big thing?” That was the question a news anchor asked Mark Zuckerberg, back in 2004. Less than three months earlier, he had launched TheFacebook – envisaging it as a directory for his fellow students at Harvard, said Anthony Cuthbertson in The Independent. As Zuckerberg explained to the host, he had hoped that 400 or 500 people would sign up. “Now we’re at 100,000, so who knows where we’re going next... Maybe we can make something cool.” Fast-forward 15 years and Facebook has 2.32 billion users – almost a third of the world’s population. It generated $7bn profits in the past quarter and, with Google, it directly influences more than 70% of internet traffic. Having adopted a strategy of buying its rivals (including Instagram and WhatsApp),…

Job interviews are rarely a pleasant experience, said James Moore in The Independent, but the one Olivia Bland endured last week appears to have been particularly hideous. The 22-year-old graduate says she was left in tears at the bus stop after a two-hour grilling by Craig Dean, the boss of a tech company in Oldham where she had hoped to become a communications assistant. In a letter to the company turning down a job offer, which she posted on Twitter, Bland complained that Dean had called her an “underachiever”, torn apart her written application, asked personal questions and even criticised her music taste as he scrolled through her Spotify account. The interview, she wrote, felt like “being sat in a room” with her “abusive ex”. Aspects of the interview certainly…

Even by England’s standards, this was a “complete fiasco”, said Paul Newman in The Mail on Sunday. Their Caribbean tour went from bad to worse last week when they stumbled to another “shambolic” defeat. The second Test against West Indies was wrapped up in only three days: England were beaten by ten wickets, scoring only 319 across their two innings. With another Test still to play, they have already lost the series to a team ranked a lowly No. 8 in the world. So far, England’s batsmen have averaged a pathetic 16.05 runs per wicket – their worst return since the 1880s. What is it about England and batting collapses, asked Mike Atherton in The Times. Whatever the opponents, whatever the conditions, they keep collapsing. That’s because they have only…

To The Independent I can’t ever remember agreeing with Nick Gibb, the schools minister, about anything educational, but on the crucial issue of mobile phones in schools, I find myself in total agreement. There exists reputable and ever-growing research evidence on the harm done to children by these technologies – physiologically, psychologically and socially – and it’s simply delusory that they represent unproblematic human “progress”. The addictive and distracting nature of “technologies of instantaneity”, and the commercial vested interests pushing them, make for a truly toxic mix, against which children simply do not possess the developmental maturity to protect themselves and make healthy, informed decisions about them. And that many adults seem also to fall into this latter category, and to be in complete denial about the “shadow” side of…

Best books… Frank Tallis The writer and clinical psychologist picks his favourite books. His latest book, The Incurable Romantic – a collection of case histories showing how love and desire can unbalance the mind – is published by Abacus in paperback at £9.99 Crash by J.G. Ballard, 1973 (Harper Perennial £8.99). A novel ostensibly about extreme sexual perversion. All of Ballard’s novels are of equal merit. The word “Ballardian” has entered the English language for good reason. Arguably the greatest writer of the late 20th century. Interpreting Dreams by Sigmund Freud, 1899 (Penguin £12.99). A monumental achievement that simply defies categorisation: part autobiography, part casebook, part scientific treatise. Not only the cornerstone of psychoanalysis, but also a work that can be read as modernist literature equal in stature to Ulysses…

Chatting to a friend the other day, I discovered that he only ever buys one wine, and works his way through a case of it before reordering, says Fiona Beckett in The Guardian. (It is the Wine Society’s Duo du Midi at £6.25, in case you’re curious). This strikes a wine-lover like myself as very odd. But if you, too, are a creature of habit, here some other great-value “everyday” wines that you might find you want to stick with. Berry Bros & Rudd Good Ordinary Claret 2016 (£9.95) is Berry’s bestselling wine. It will please your friends and go with just about anything. Or if Malbec is your thing, check out Co-op’s Don David Blend of Terroirs Malbec 2016 (£9). It’s a “joyously juicy” example, and Fairtrade too. When…

● Make sure the washing machine spin cycle is at the maximum (unless you’re washing delicate fabrics). Clothes spun at 1,800rpm will come out with nearly half the water content of those spun at 800rpm. ● To reduce the risk of mould, dry clothes in bathrooms or kitchens with extractor fans, and close the door. If you don’t have an extractor fan, a normal one will help. Or dry clothes in a conservatory or garage. ● To speed up the process, replace your old clothes horse with a heated one, such as Lakeland’s Dry:Soon (£120); it costs less than 6p an hour to run. ● Ceiling-mounted dryers with pulleys like the Sheila Maid (from £55; sheilamaid.com) are great if you have high ceilings, or a utility room. They’re out of…

Fife Arms, Braemar Thanks to a “starry renovation”, the once fusty Fife Arms can now lay claim to being “the hottest hotel in Scotland”, says Rebecca Rose in the Financial Times. The design includes the hotel’s own bespoke tartan, Liberty wallpapers, myriad velvets, a “psychedelic” ceiling fresco, a Lucian Freud “hanging casually” on a wall and even a huge Louise Bourgeois spider looming in the courtyard. And then there’s the taxidermy – “in every nook and cranny is a rigid creature waiting to surprise you”. Dedicated minimalists would “run a mile”, but by “some alchemistic means” it adds up to a witty, “vibrant whole” that never feels “overdone”. Doubles from £146 per night.Visit thefifearms.com .…

Hugh McIlvanney 1934-2019 Hugh McIlvanney, who has died aged 84, was widely regarded as Britain’s greatest ever sports writer, a man whose “mellifluous, muscular, multi-clause” prose far exceeded the usual standards of the genre, said The Daily Telegraph. Although he wrote about most sports, his passions were for racing, boxing and football. “Anyone immune to the delicious lunacy of horse racing,” he observed, “is suffering a deprivation for which mere solvency cannot compensate.” He was all too aware of the hopes and dreams invested in football – and cautioned against it. “Some of us have been acknowledging through most of our lives that the game is hopelessly ill-equipped to carry the burden of emotional expression the Scots seek to load upon it,” he wrote, after Scotland were knocked out of…

A U-turn on monetary policy from the US Federal Reserve, as it switched from signalling further interest rate rises, put a rocket under stock markets, which rallied globally. Following several successive days of gains, the FTSE 100 soared as high as 7,180, before falling back slightly. The economic news was less rosy. According to the IHS Markit purchasing managers’ index, Britain’s service sector “stagnated” in January, and there is a risk of the manufacturing sector falling into recession. The figures revealed that manufacturers were preparing for Brexit by stockpiling raw materials at a record pace. Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy, slipped into recession in the last quarter of 2018, for the third time in a decade. The turmoil in the car market continued. Nissan’s move to shift production of…

Brexit, what Brexit? “At what point do financial markets start to panic about the risk of a no-deal Brexit,” asked Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “In theory, you’d think it would be about now”, given wholesale political confusion and a rapidly ticking clock. But all we’ve really seen is a “minor wobble” in the pound. Some City strategists seem determined “to pluck some cheerful titbits” from the dismal tide of political news. And the market as a whole “continues to ascribe a low probability to a no-deal Brexit” – most strategists at big banks put the odds at less than 20%. “This relaxed tone may yet turn out to be justified by events”: eleventh-hour brinkmanship “is always a possible plot line” in EU negotiations. “Yet the air of complacency in…

Powell has bought us another year Ambrose Evans-Pritchard The Daily Telegraph “It has been a close-run thing for the global economy over the past two months,” says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. An economic slump in China, combined with slowing electronics sales across Asia, has helped pull “Korea, Japan and parts of Europe into a contractionary vortex”. Thankfully, the US Federal Reserve has recognised a “potentially dangerous” situation. Last week, in a handbrake turn “dramatic enough to avoid a bloodbath”, it softened its strategy on interest rates and “quantitative tightening”. Global finance will no longer have “to face the slow torture of Fed bond sales running at $50bn a month” into the early 2020s. The news is a “powerful tonic” for an international system that has racked up $12trn of offshore dollar liabilities.…

The week’s best shares Centamin The Sunday Times The gold miner had a disappointing 2018. But, with a refreshed board, it is “turning a corner” as output recovers and the gold price rallies. Panmure Gordon gives a 140p price target. Buy. 118p. GlaxoSmithKline The Daily Telegraph GSK’s split into two businesses – a consumer healthcare firm (a new joint venture with Pfizer) and a separate drug arm – should mean gains for investors. The former’s healthy margins and strong cash flow can support its high debt. Yields 5.5%. Buy. £14.52. Hotel Chocolat Group Investors Chronicle The chocolatier is being driven forward by a combination of strong online traction, new UK store openings and international growth. Increased capacity should boost margins and the brand. Debt-free with good cash flow. Buy. 305p.…

Controversy of the week The battle for Venezuela “No nation in the western hemisphere is worse-governed than Venezuela,” said The Times. Nicolás Maduro’s regime has presided over a decline of 40% in real incomes per head over the past five years; inflation runs at more than 1,000,000%. Venezuelans are malnourished and lack simple medicines. Maduro’s misrule is “sustained by repression and fraud” – last year’s presidential election was a “charade” – and has created a huge refugee crisis. Three million of the country’s 32 million people have emigrated. The US and most Latin American nations have recognised the opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s claim to be the head of state (constitutionally, as the head of the national assembly, he becomes interim president in the absence of a legitimate alternative). Last week,…

The birth of the 007 theme It’s hard to imagine a James Bond film without Bond’s signature theme; but Monty Norman didn’t write it for 007, says Adam Luck in The Mail on Sunday. In 1962, Cubby Broccoli asked Norman to write the score for Dr. No, and paid for him to fly to Jamaica, where it was being filmed, to find inspiration. There, he met Sean Connery, and watched Ursula Andress walking out of the sea, singing his song, Underneath the Mango Tree. “She looked unbelievable, but was singing poorly in this broad Germanic accent. In the end, my wife sang and it was dubbed.” The trip was productive, but a theme tune still eluded him – until he remembered a song he’d composed years earlier for a musical…

Why is it called “county lines”? It’s a relatively new business model, in which drug gangs expand their operations from their big city bases – London, Liverpool, Birmingham – to smaller cities, towns and rural areas across Britain. The term “lines” refers to the dedicated mobile phone lines, “deal lines”, that dealers use to supply drugs. According to a new report by the National Crime Agency (NCA), there are about 1,000 established county line networks, each capable of making profits of more than £800,000 a year – all linked to child exploitation, human trafficking and the systematic use of violence. How do the operations work? The NCA report says the county lines offenders are “highly adaptable”, but most of them work like franchises. Gangs set up branded phone lines, using…

A career criminal has robbed a bank in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, because he missed prison life. Six months after finishing a 20-year term in New Jersey for attempted homicide, William Gallagher, 68, took the train to Wisconsin – he’d heard its prisons had the best food – and held up a branch of Chase Bank, claiming to have a bomb, before asking the cashier to call the police. “Am I going to prison or what?” he asked the judge when his case came to court. The world’s first sausage hotel has opened in Germany. Gasthaus Böbel in Rittersbach, Franconia, is described by its owner, master butcher Claus Böbel, as “a little, classy, premium bratwurst hotel”. Each of the rooms is dedicated to a different aspect of the sausage. One displays the…

AFGHANISTAN Taliban peace deal is merely a surrender The Washington Post Afghans suffered terribly in the two decades of civil war and Taliban tyranny that began in the late 1970s, says Ryan Crocker, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan; and none more so than women and girls, whose freedoms were extinguished. But after the Taliban’s overthrow in 2001, bombed-out cities were rebuilt, new roads laid with Western aid and freedoms restored. In 2001, fewer than a million children were in school, all boys; now there are nine million, of whom 39% are girls. The US also encouraged Afghan women to get involved in business, government and the army. The message from America was clear: “if you step forward, we’ve got your back”. But under the terms of the peace deal…

Neanderthals were intelligent enough to build sophisticated and deadly spears that enabled them to hunt dangerous prey from a safe distance, new research suggests. Using stone tools, researchers at UCL built replicas of the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found – a set of 300,000-year-old spears discovered in a mine at Schöningen, Germany. When thrown by trained javelin athletes, the spears travelled up to 20 metres – double the distance expected – and did so with enough force to bring down a large animal. Scientists had previously thought that long-distance hunting only became possible when humans invented specialised weapons such as atlatls (spear-throwers) and bows. It was assumed that Neanderthal hunters had to grapple with prey in close combat. “Studies like these add to a mounting body of evidence against…

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is one of David Hockney’s most famous paintings. However, Celia Birtwell (Mrs Clark) has revealed that the artist took a few liberties with the scene. The portrait was based on a photo of her and Ossie Clark in their bedroom, but Hockney made it look like a living room, and “added the shagpile carpet because he couldn’t draw Ossie’s feet”, she told the London Evening Standard. What’s more, the cat wasn’t Percy. Its name was Blanche, but “David said Percy had a better ring to it. He was right.” It has taken 47 years, but Richard E. Grant has finally received a reply to a fan letter he wrote to Barbra Streisand when he was 14. The story began in 1971, when Grant read…

“I hate to spread rumours, but what else can one do with them?” French singer Amanda Lear, quoted in the LA Times “At the BBC you have to start at the bottom – and kiss it.” Jeremy Hardy’s advice for aspiring comedians, quoted in The Times “In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.” Rudi Dornbusch, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “I’ve never yet met a man who could look after me. I don’t need a husband. What I need is a wife.” Joan Collins, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” Voltaire, quoted on Reaction “A crisis is an opportunity riding the dangerous wind.” Chinese…

It was a hat-trick that summed up “the striker’s art”, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. In Manchester City’s 3-1 win over Arsenal, on Sunday, Sergio Agüero’s goals came from “an innate understanding of where the ball would arrive”: he scored all three from close range, including a controversial goal off his elbow. It was the 30-year-old Argentinian’s tenth hat-trick in the Premier League, one short of Alan Shearer’s record. And it took his tally to 157 goals in 227 league matches, giving him an extraordinary average of 0.69 goals per game. This phenomenal goalscorer is “one of the greatest English football has seen”. When Agüero joined City in 2011, he found his feet instantly, said Charlie Eccleshare in The Daily Telegraph. He scored two goals on his debut;…

David and Brian discuss the partnership meeting. Brian admits things got heated. David points out that Brian will be putting Ruth in an awkward position by pleading not guilty, since she would get called to give evidence and face lying under oath. Brian says he isn’t backing down. Pat’s curious when she finds Helen texting Lee. Helen says Pat’s reading too much into things. Pat feels Lee’s not on Helen’s wavelength. Lynda confronts Roy over his mistreatment of Lexi. Roy twigs that she must mean that Lexi’s pregnant and thinks he has walked out on her. Helen and Lee have a lovely dinner out, despite Helen’s nerves. Roy confronts Lexi at Honeysuckle Cottage. He’s upset she hasn’t told him about the pregnancy and that the whole village thinks he’s the…

What the experts recommend The Beckford Bottle Shop 5-8 Saville Row, Bath (01225-809302) This off-licence and restaurant in Bath is run by the people behind two of my favourite pubs – The Talbot Inn in Mells, Somerset and the Beckford Arms in the Wiltshire village of Tisbury, says Giles Coren in The Times. And with their new outpost, they’re onto another winner. The space itself is a “beautifully modernised” delight – combining high-ceilinged grandeur with a welcoming cosiness. There’s a cracking range of wines available in the “brutally sexy” off-licence (and any of them can be brought to your table for a small corkage). And from Tuesday to Saturday, there’s a “tantalising menu of grown-up sharing dishes” – oysters, crispy Bath chaps (cured pork cheeks), rabbit and black pudding…

New cars: what the critics say Autocar The Japanese carmaker Lexus has always seemed to be playing a long game in Europe – never going out aggressively to “steal market share” from its German rivals, while quietly doubling its “footprint” on the continent over the past five years. But the arrival this year of the seventh ES – a mid-sized executive saloon never before sold in Europe – might signal a change in strategy. The Daily Telegraph The ES is “the biggest-selling Japanese luxury car you’ve never heard of”. It has a “natty” look, with a “spindle” grille and Lexus’s “weird” creases and cuts. And an impressive amount of kit comes as standard: heated front seats, cyclist and pedestrian recognition, a reversing camera. There’s lots of legroom, and a fine…

Home to the National Snowdrop Collection, Fife’s Cambo Estate has more than 350 varieties. You can buy snowdrops to take home, and there are tours on Fridays (until 8 March; cambosnowdrops.com). At Benington Lordship Gardens in Hertfordshire, snowdrops lie dramatically by the remains of a Norman keep and moat (until 3 March; beningtonlordship.co.uk). Used as a location for The Great British Bake Off, Welford Park in Berkshire is one of 94 gardens opening this year as part of the National Garden Scheme’s Snowdrop Festival (until 3 March; welfordpark.co.uk). The ancient woodland at Hodsock Priory, Nottinghamshire, is carpeted with four million snowdrops each year (9-17 February; hodsockpriory.com). One of many National Trust properties with a snowdrop display, Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire has plenty of walks and guided tours for exploring its…

Symphony of ice in the Dolomites It has to be the “coolest concert on the planet”, says Andrew Eames in The Sunday Times. Not only are we listening to music in an igloo on the edge of a glacier, but the instruments are made of ice. Here in the Italian resort of Tonale, an “ambitious” music festival is currently playing to rugged-up audiences in temperatures of -12°C. The man behind it is Tim Linhart, an American ice artist who has made “every instrument you can think of”, from a grand piano to a flute which can only be played for “a couple of minutes before it starts to melt”. The violin and viola are preserved by “breath defenders” on which the players rest their chins, and audience numbers are limited…

Jeremy Hardy 1961-2019 Many people are capable of being very funny, and many can express their political beliefs coherently, said The Guardian. Jeremy Hardy, who was died aged 57, had the “astonishing ability to do both at the same time”. A lifelong socialist, he frequently railed against Tory policies, both in his stand-up and on Radio 4 panel shows, yet he was never the ranting “firebrand”, said The Independent. Clad in a cardigan, he came across like an “amiable sociology lecturer”; it was this contrast between the material and its delivery that gave his comedy such a sharp edge. And though admired for his perfectly crafted one-liners, he was also capable of flights of glorious silliness: on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, he delighted audiences with his off-key singing…

City rumours had it that Sports Direct’s Mike Ashley would snap up HMV, said Joe Curtis in City AM. Turn that record over. Following a dramatic late entry into the contest for the “iconic” high street music titan, which collapsed for a second time in six years in December, the Canadian music entrepreneur Doug Putman has emerged as the successful bidder. Putman’s Sunrise Records is paying an undisclosed sum for HMV – pledging to revitalise it by boosting vinyl sales. Given the steady decline of physical media sales, plenty of analysts are sceptical about whether the plan to make LPs “a major revenue driver” is really a runner. Does HMV have a big opportunity under the new owner or is it “still living on borrowed time”, asked Russ Mould of…

Last year was “difficult” for most types of investors, “with volatility shooting up and trends breaking down”, said David Stevenson on Citywire. But one group “should have outperformed in this hazardous environment”. The whole point of “absolute returns managers” is that they “aim to deliver positive returns in any market conditions” – steering through the cycle via “a combination of both long (bullish) and short (bearish) positions”. It’s a “mightily alluring” promise. Sadly, last year it fell decidedly flat. Of the 102 funds operating in the UK that reported full-year 2018 results, “only 12 reported an absolute positive return”. The other 90 were all “negative”, with five funds reporting losses of 10% or more. “The good news is that there were some stellar performers with familiar names in the top…

Bill Gross During a storming five decades at Pimco, the maverick Bill Gross “racked up one of the longest winning streaks of any money manager” and was credited with transforming bond investment, said Bloomberg. “A gambler before he became an investor” (he put himself through college on his blackjack winnings), Gross established himself as “a fixed-income whizz”, aided by a historic bond bull market. But he’s “leaving the stage after a tough final chapter”. After an explosive row at Pimco, he joined Janus in 2014 – but never really found his mojo. At Janus, Gross, 74, maintained his “trademark eccentric punditry”, said Lex in the FT. In a dispatch last year, ostensibly about the US ten-year Treasury yield, he “name-dropped” Moses, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. Angela Ahrendts “I went…

Paris Police rapists: Two French police officers – both former members of an elite anti-gang unit – have been found guilty of raping a Canadian tourist at the headquarters of the Paris police in 2014, and sentenced to seven years in prison. The officers were out drinking with colleagues when they met their victim, Emily Spanton, in a bar, then invited her back to 36 Quai des Orfèvres (the French equivalent of Scotland Yard). There, they led her to a fifth-floor office, where they forced her to drink whisky and then raped her. Spanton testified that she had been raped by three men, and a third DNA sample was found on her underwear, but the third attacker has never been identified. Antoine Quirin and Nicolas Redouane claimed that Spanton had…

1 A Sea Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams, performed by Andrew Davis with the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Symphony Orchestra 2 On My Way by Andy Fraser and Paul Rodgers, performed by Free 3* Down to You, written and performed by Joni Mitchell 4 It Must Be Love by Labi Siffre, performed by Madness 5 The Punk and the Godfather by Pete Townshend, performed by The Who 6 Hot on the Heels of Heartbreak by Paul Heaton and David Rotheray, performed by The Beautiful South 7 Some Fantastic Place by Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, performed by Squeeze 8 King of the Rodeo, written and performed by Kings of Leon Book: My Secret History by Paul Theroux Luxury: a…

Growing in tandem with county lines, the practice of “cuckooing” – victims’ homes being taken over by gangs as bases for illegal activity – is now estimated to affect thousands of people across the UK. Urban dealers typically befriend vulnerable people in rural and coastal towns, offering drugs to gain their trust. Victims often include those who are addicted to drugs, or who have mental-health issues, or both, although elderly people, sex workers, single mothers and those in poverty are also at risk. One common scenario is that a drug user gets into debt, and is forced to let a gang member move in, using their home to store, process and sell drugs. In 2017, three-quarters of police forces in England and Wales documented evidence of cuckooing related to county…

Britain’s hare population has declined by about 80% over the past century, says The Guardian, largely as a result of habitat loss. Now the creatures may be facing a new threat: a deadly rabbit virus called haemorrhagic disease type 2. Sightings of sick and dying hares began to be reported last September, fuelling speculation that the virus, which is already affecting populations of European brown hares in Italy, France, Australia and Spain, had also crossed the species barrier in the UK. Now, it has been confirmed for the first time in three cases in the UK – two in Dorset, the other in Essex. It is too early to say if the virus is behind the recently observed die-off: there have also been reports that myxomatosis may be affecting hares.…

“If you think Europe is under strain now, wait until it faces a new nuclear arms race,” said Edward Lucas in The Times. That’s what awaits us, after last weekend’s decision by the United States and Russia to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. The deal dates back to the late Soviet era, when thousands of medium-range nuclear missiles were stationed on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Thanks to the INF, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, more than 2,600 such nuclear missiles were destroyed. “We were all safer as a result.” President Trump has now suspended participation in the INF – citing the fact that Russia has illegally developed a new ground-launched cruise missile, the 9M729. The US has threatened to leave the treaty…

It was the day it all came together for England, said Stephen Jones in The Sunday Times. “Every hope and every plan and every loose end.” They arrived in Dublin last Saturday, at the start of their Six Nations campaign, as underdogs: Ireland, the No. 2 team in the world and reigning Six Nations champions, were unbeaten in 12 home matches. But in a “titanic” match, the English crushed the hosts, scoring four tries to win 32-20. They have waited “a long time for a display like this”, said Tom Fordyce on BBC Sport. It was probably England’s finest performance since they beat the All Blacks in 2012 – and certainly the finest in the three years that Eddie Jones has been head coach. What a way to start a…

True cost of antibiotics To The Guardian Contrary to your article (“The microbes are fighting back, and if anyone thinks there is a simple solution, they are wrong”), a few decades ago precisely no one in drug discovery thought that the war against infectious diseases had been won. Alexander Fleming, who first discovered antibiotics, warned of microbial resistance and it has been known about since. The reason drug companies have shied away from antibiotic research is, as mentioned in the article, that it is extremely difficult to discover new ones. Unfortunately, a proposal to alter the way new drugs are rewarded will not change this. Every drug company knows that any new, effective antibiotic will be an instant “blockbuster”. The problem is that, even with the best minds in the…

Programmes David Bowie: Finding Fame Francis Whately’s film traces the first decade of Bowie’s career, as he faced repeated rejection. It uses contemporary footage, some of it unseen for years, and interviews with friends, lovers and collaborators, including the late choreographer Lindsay Kemp. Sat 9 Feb, BBC2 21:00 (90mins). Under the Wire Gripping documentary about war correspondent Marie Colvin’s final assignment, reporting on the slaughter of civilians in Syria with her photographer, Paul Conroy. Mon 11 Feb, BBC4 22:00 (95mins). The Making of Me In the UK, record numbers of people are changing their gender. Filmed over three years, this three-part series follows nine people as they go through this process. Mon 11 Feb, C4 22:00 (60mins). The Last Survivors Arthur Cary’s outstanding film (first shown last month) brings together…

My tipple of choice is a good cup of warm chai, says Kimberly Parsons – and I love to incorporate its comforting flavour into my food. This porridge is like a soft, warm blanket. It takes care of you and gives you a little pleasure when it’s dark and frosty outside Chai-spiced porridge Serves 2 100g rolled oats a pinch of sea salt ½ tsp ground cinnamon ¼ tsp ground nutmeg a pinch of ground cardamom ¼ tsp ground ginger 440ml oat milk, or milk of your choice 2 tbsps pure maple syrup 2 tbsps almond butter 1 tsp pure vanilla extract full-fat, natural Greek yoghurt (vegan if necessary), to serve granola, to serve • Add the oats, salt and spices to a small saucepan and stir to combine, then…

Bosch PSB 1800 LI-2 Combi Drill While it doesn’t have a hammer action, this drill/driver has a great “power-to-weight” ratio. It’s relatively quiet and smooth, and the battery takes just over an hour to charge (£80; clasohlson.com). DeWALT DW088K line laser A pricey but professional-grade laser level, this gadget projects horizontal or vertical lines on your wall at the push of a button. Accurate to 0.3mm/m, you can wall-mount it, or just set it down (£139; amazon.co.uk). VonHaus Cordless Nail & Staple Gun Much more reasonably priced than many on the market, this 2-in-1 cordless nail and staple gun has a two-stage safety trigger and depth control adjustment (£115; amazon.co.uk). Bosch PST 700 E jigsaw Although it’s one of the cheapest jigsaws on the market, this is still a precise…

A perfect ski base Seven nights self-catering at Résidence La Rivière, in the French commune of Chamonix, cost from £144pp. excluding flights. 0870-026 7145, pierreetvacances.com. Arrive 21 April. Deluxe riad experience Stay 3 nights at Riad Star in Marrakech, including traditional hammam and full body massage from £268pp b&b, excluding flights. 0800-043 6600, spabreaks.com. Arrive 8 March. Five-star Cyprus Spend 7 nights at the Coral Beach Hotel & Resort, with Paphos just 25 minutes away by car. From £769pp b&b, with Edinburgh flights. 020-3424 9731, olympicholidays.com. Depart 14 April. Dominican Republic break A 7-night all-inclusive stay at the delightful Now Onyx Punta Cana resort, with a garden view room and London flights, costs from £1,097pp. 020-3897 1185, loveholidays.com. Depart 30 April.…

Australian banks: shenanigans down under Plenty of people in Britain think it’s lamentable that there has never been a comprehensive inquiry into our banking system. Not so in Australia, where the country’s “largest financial institutions” have just been savaged by a damning Royal Commission report, said Karen Maley in the Australian Financial Review. This once-in-a-generation report has laid bare a culture of greed and dismal advice – notably in the form of “fees-for-no-service”, where customers were charged for advice they never received, in some cases after they had died. The report also made 76 recommendations for tackling the problems. It doesn’t make pretty reading, said Stephen Johnson in the Daily Mail Australia. The report is packed with evidence of misconduct, and testimonies from broken businesses and ripped-off individuals. But will…