Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1218 i The Week

What happened May’s Brexit debacle Britain plunged deeper into political crisis this week after the Commons inflicted a second humiliating defeat on Theresa May’s Brexit plan. The deal, which was voted down by a record 230 votes in January, was rejected this time by 149 votes. May said Parliament now faced some “unenviable choices”. In two subsequent votes, MPs were expected to reject a no-deal exit and to instruct the Government to request an extension to the Article 50 withdrawal process. The EU said it would need a “credible justification” before agreeing to delay Brexit beyond the scheduled deadline of 29 March. May had urged MPs to back her “improved Brexit deal” after she secured fresh legal assurances on the Irish backstop from the EU in last-minute talks in Strasbourg…

64% of American voters think President Trump committed crimes before he was elected in 2016. 24% think he did not. 45% believe he has broken the law since entering the White House, while 43% do not. Quinnipiac University/ The Independent 44% of British adults think the transgender rights movement has “gone too far”. 31% say it hasn’t, and 25% don’t know. However, 62% say they welcome moves to ensure that trans-gender people are more widely accepted in society. ComRes/The Daily Telegraph 45% of Britons aged 18 to 24 would feel “weird” without their smartphones for a day because they “would not know what to do”. YouGov…

Salvation through sailing No one expected that Tracy Edwards would become a world-class sailor. In fact, no one expected her to become much of anything at all. Beaten by her drunken stepfather and bullied at school, she was expelled at 15 and given two years’ probation for stealing a car, says Damian Whitworth in The Times. It was a traumatic time, but without it, she wouldn’t have run away to Greece where, aged 17, she found work in a bar – which led to a job on a boat. In the next few years, she learnt not only to sail, but also to navigate, and by 1989, she was proficient enough to skipper the first all-female crew to take part in the round-the-world Whitbread race. Her yacht, Maiden, came second…

A Saudi Arabian airlines flight from Jeddah to Kuala Lumpur was forced to turn back after a passenger informed cabin crew that she had left her baby at the airport. “This flight is requesting to come back... a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing,” the pilot tells air traffic control, in a video clip that has gone viral. “OK, head back to the gate,” says the operator. “This is totally a new one for us.” A pet rabbit from Illinois has been declared the oldest living rabbit in the world by Guinness World Records. Mick, an agouti, marked his 16th birthday last month. “I am very proud of him, and have been very inspired by the resilience and positivity he’s shown throughout his life,” said…

HUNGARY Kicking out Orbán’s party won’t help Der Standard (Vienna) Europe’s conservatives have been endlessly patient with Viktor Orbán, says Thomas Mayer. For years they’ve accepted MEPs belonging to the Hungarian PM’s party – Fidesz – into the ranks of their European People’s Party (EPP), the largest grouping in the European Parliament. But Orbán’s latest provocation may have put paid to that. His government has for some time been putting up posters that accuse US-Hungarian philanthropist George Soros of plotting to flood the country with immigrants. But now it has launched a similar campaign, this time featuring the grinning face of Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president. Juncker and his allies are outraged – and the EPP’s German leader, Manfred Weber, has called a meeting to discuss whether it should…

When Sir Francis Drake visited the Cayman Islands in 1586, he recorded seeing “little beasts like cats” and creatures he called “coneys” (an old English word for rabbits). In the early 1700s, European settlers arrived on the islands and these mammals abruptly vanished, never to be documented again. But now, it seems, some may have been “found” – in the form of the fossilised bones retrieved from the stomachs of long-dead crocodiles. The discovery came when researchers re-examined fossilised crocodile digestive remains found in caves and sinkholes on the islands between the 1930s and the 1990s. Among this material were the bones of three previously undocumented mammals – two large rodents and a smaller shrew-like animal. As these fossils date from the early 1700s, chances are they are the remains…

Grappling with Brexit has become so stressful, MPs are turning to man’s best friend for comfort, reports the London Evening Standard. “This is our new puppy Coco,” tweeted James Cleverly this week; Lucy Allan, his fellow Tory, chimed in with “I got a puppy too as an antidote to all the Brexit stuff”; the DUP’s Nigel Dodds posted a picture of his new dog. Donald Tusk, the European Council president, also posted a photo of him with a springer spaniel, under the words “my English friend”. Boris Johnson’s drastic haircut has been attributed to Carrie Symonds, 30, his new girlfriend, wanting to make him more presentable. But according to the Daily Mail, the truth is more prosaic. It seems Johnson, 54, went to the Commons hair salon, where his usual…

Cricket England won their final T20 match against West Indies by eight wickets to secure a 3-0 series whitewash. Football Arsenal beat Man United 2-0, inflicting the Red Devils’ first league defeat since Ole Gunnar Solskjær was appointed interim manager in December. Man City kept their lead at the top of the table, beating Watford 3-1. Zinedine Zidane was reappointed Real Madrid manager, ten months after leaving the club. Six Nations Wales beat Scotland 18-11. Ireland beat France 26-14.…

Exhibition of the week Exposed: The Renaissance Nude Royal Academy, London W1 (020-7300 8090, royalacademy.org.uk ). Until 2 June The figure of the nude in art is “an infinitely flexible entity that can be put to an extraordinary range of expressive possibilities”, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. And nobody understood this better than the artists of the Renaissance, the historical moment at which “the naked body re-emerged in all its glory from behind medieval drapes” and became an object of veneration. This new exhibition is a celebration of this remarkable flowering, bringing together a wealth of paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings to show how Renaissance artists drew on classical influences to produce some of the most enduring works ever created. Featuring many of art’s best-recognised names…

Lee looks for Helen at Bridge Farm without any success. Tom has trouble finding a best man. As neither Roy nor Jazzer can make the wedding, Tom asks Johnny, who’s thrilled. Hannah tells Tom that she’s fine with Natasha moving into the house for a while, but later admits to Johnny that she still has feelings for Tom. Kenton hears that Freddie may be able to live at Lower Loxley after all. He explains to Elizabeth that having him there could damage their chances of getting the alcohol licence back. Elizabeth doesn’t care. Lee confides in Emma that Helen changed into a different person on their date and now won’t answer his messages. Susan’s dinner party goes well. Although Alice and Chris don’t enjoy being grilled about baby plans, Brian…

The market reaction to Chancellor Philip Hammond’s spring statement was broadly muted, despite a downgrade to Britain’s economic growth forecast this year to 1.2%, from 1.6% in the autumn. The pound, which had been gyrating before this week’s parliamentary votes on Brexit, held on to its gains – after falling by 1% on Tuesday when Attorney General Geoffrey Cox delivered his verdict on the new “backstop” plan. Hammond promised an end to austerity and a £26bn dividend if Parliament passes a deal. Assuming that happens, the Office for Budget Responsibility maintained its forecast of 1.4% for growth in 2020 and revised up its 2021 forecast to 1.6%. In all five years of OBR forecasts, borrowing was lowered. Business groups criticised government proposals to slash tariffs to zero in a no-deal…

Neil Woodford “Woodford, Woodford, Woodford. I’m almost as fed up hearing that name as I am the word B**X*T.” That view of a Citywire website user last week sums up the mounting pressures facing the former investment star. Woodford, 58, is caught in a vicious cycle. Poor returns have sparked an investor exodus from his flagship Woodford Equity Income fund, forcing him to raise cash quickly by flogging some £5bn of “easy-to-sell” blue-chip stocks. Yet that has only upped the fund’s exposure to smaller, riskier plays, meaning more redemptions and an ever twitchier City regulator. In February, Woodford suffered the ignominy of being included in Bestinvest’s “Spot the Dog” list of underperforming funds. Once described by the BBC as “the man who can’t stop making money”, Woodford studied economics at…

Controversy of the week Jackson’s toxic legacy The need to believe that the famous and talented are also good is deeply ingrained in us, said Ben Zand in the I newspaper. For years, Michael Jackson surrounded himself with young boys; he turned his home into a bizarre, toy-filled theme park with which to beguile them; he even told us he shared his bed with them. All the signs that he was a predatory paedophile were there; yet we were so dazzled, we chose to believe that he was just the child-like figure he claimed to be – until a new documentary shattered those illusions, said Carol Midgley in The Times. Watching Leaving Neverland “was like having front row seats for a slow car crash”. Wade Robson, now 36, and James…

Brussels Isis convictions: A French citizen who spent a year fighting for Islamic State in Syria has been jailed for life for killing four people in a gun attack on Brussels’ Jewish Museum in 2014. Mehdi Nemmouche (pictured), who is of Algerian heritage and had previously spent five years in jail for robbery, is believed to be the first European jihadist to return from Syria and carry out a terror attack in Europe. His lawyers argued that he had been framed in a bizarre conspiracy involving Israeli intelligence, but offered no evidence for this claim. A second Frenchman, Nacer Bendrer, was given 15 years for helping to plan the attack. Paris Taxing the tech giants: France is set to become the first EU country to impose a tax on the…

1 La Vie en rose by Édith Piaf, Louiguy and Marguerite Monnot, performed by Édith Piaf 2 Feeling Good by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, performed by Nina Simone 3 Blue Moon by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, performed by Ella Fitzgerald 4* September Song by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson, performed by Frank Sinatra 5 Theme from Schindler’s List by John Williams, performed by Itzhak Perlman 6 Walking in the Air by Howard Blake, performed by Peter Auty, featured in The Snowman 7 Happy, written and performed by Pharrell Williams 8 Chanson de Matin by Elgar, performed by Barry Wordsworth with the BBC Concert Orchestra Book: Poem for the Day One, foreword by Wendy Cope Luxury: bath with hot, cold…

For most of human history, we have exploited a small selection of elements: copper, tin, iron, lead, silver, gold. But in the past few decades, the number of elements we wield in our technological society “has absolutely exploded”, said Dr Lewis Dartnell in The Observer. The human body is made up of some 25 essential elements. But a smartphone uses between 35 and 70, from carbon and hydrogen in the plastic to lithium and cobalt in the battery to rare earth minerals such as yttrium in the LCD screens. If you own a smart-phone, “you have in your pocket a substantial fraction of all the stable elements in the periodic table”. From electronics to engines, from green tech to industrial catalysts, modern technology requires a huge range of elements. Today,…

Trump’s very own news service Nicole Hemmer CNN The New Yorker published an “explosive exposé” last week about Fox News, says Nicole Hemmer. It alleged that the conservative channel tipped off Donald Trump about questions before a 2015 Republican primary debate, and shelved a story about him paying hush money to the porn actress Stormy Daniels. The story has caused a stir, but has also prompted some to ask whether this really represents anything new. Haven’t many presidents been cosy with certain media outlets before? Didn’t MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declare he felt “‘a thrill go up his leg’ when he listened to Barack Obama’s speeches”? These people have a point, but the fact is that nothing in the past has come “even close to the symbiosis between Trump and Fox…

If ever there was an apt metaphor for an “exhausted” regime it must surely be Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, said Christian Makarian in L’Express (Paris). The ailing president has been in power since 1999, and had vowed to stand down in 2012 (the year before he suffered a stroke that led to him using a wheelchair), fearing that like the presidents of Egypt and of neighbouring Libya and Tunisia, he too might be toppled in the Arab Spring. But he went back on his word and Algerians, spooked by the prospect of similar upheavals, duly re-elected him. Now that the oil price crash has devastated the economy, however, they’ve had enough. So when Bouteflika declared his intention to stand for a fifth term last month, tens of thousands took to the…

Plastic doesn’t only pollute the seas; according to a new study, Britain’s lakes and rivers are also full of the stuff. A team at Bangor University analysed samples from various UK lakes, rivers, reservoirs and wetlands, and used fluorescent lighting to identify and count the microplastic particles floating in them. Unsurprisingly, they found that the most polluted river was the Tame near Manchester, with 1,000 microplastic particles per litre of water. Last year, the Tame was found to be the most polluted place yet tested in the world. But plastic was present in all the samples, including those from lakes in remote rural locations. The water taken from Ullswater, in the Lakes, contained 29.5 shards per litre; the sample from Loch Lomond in Scotland contained 2.4. “It was startling. I…

“The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.” Edith Wharton, quoted in The Times “Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.” Simone de Beauvoir, quoted on UnHerd “Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius.” Arthur Conan Doyle, quoted in The Spectator “I’m one of the few women who’s made it on talent in Hollywood. I tried to sleep my way to the top, but there were no takers.” Actress and comedian Roseanne Barr, in The Sunday Times Magazine “Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But…

Alternative schooling To The Times Students at alternative provision (AP) schools and pupil referral units are easy targets, because people don’t really understand us. But we aren’t all drug-taking, violent criminals. I want people to know what it is really like. I am a year 11 student at an alternative provision school and have been here since year 10. I am taking six GCSEs, as well as other Btec qualifications, and I am aiming for grade 6s, having already got some grade Cs/5s. A lot of previous students from my AP have gone on to college (one girl has just got a master’s degree) and that is the path I want to take. I’ve already been accepted at college in London to study for my A levels; after that I…

It has always been part of Leonardo da Vinci’s legend that he made sculptures, says Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. But not a single extant 3D work by him has been identified... until now. Curators at an exhibition in Florence last week unveiled what they claim is the only surviving Leonardo sculpture. The Virgin with the Laughing Child (pictured) is said to have been created around 1472, when Leonardo was 19 or 20 and a pupil of the artist Andrea del Verrocchio. The 50cm-tall sculpture – on loan from London’s V&A museum – had been credited to another artist, Antonio Rossellino. But Francesco Caglioti, the Italian scholar at the forefront of the new attribution, claims the complex draperies of the Virgin Mary’s dress and the realistic face of the infant…

Programmes The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan Repeat of this witty three-part travelogue in which the comedian visits places others avoid, including Haiti and Albania. Sun 17 Mar, BBC2 22:00 (60mins). Harry’s Heroes: The Full English Harry Redknapp attempts to get a team of unfit former England stars – including David Seaman and Chris Waddle – fit enough to take on their old adversaries, the Germans. Mon 18 Mar, ITV1 21:00 (90mins). The Bay Twisty six-part drama with Morven Christie as a police detective assigned to a missing persons case. Wed 20 March, ITV1 21:00 (60mins). Pose Ryan Murphy’s hit US drama is an exuberant portrait of ball culture during the Aids crisis in 1980s New York. It boasts the largest-ever LGBTQ cast for a scripted series. Thur 21 Mar, BBC2…

What the experts recommend The Whitebrook Whitebrook, Monmouthshire (01600-860254) Drive north past Tintern Abbey and up the Wye Valley and you will pass through “some of the most stirring country on Earth”, says Tom Parker Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. Wordsworth celebrated this majestic landscape, recalling a time of “aching joys” and “dizzy raptures” among its “steep woods and lofty cliffs” – and at The Whitebrook, a welcoming Michelin-starred restaurant-with-rooms in a hamlet by the river, the joys and raptures are plentiful indeed. Roasted Jerusalem artichoke is the “very essence of sweet winter”, balanced with delicate goat’s curd. A beautifully opaque, butter-burnished scallop comes with a smooth parsnip puree, while plum pickle “provides an acidic whip crack”. Roasted cauliflower with pickled onion, ramson buds and crisp kale is…

Police officer who investigated “shoot to kill” John Stalker 1939-2019 In 1982, six unarmed Catholic men were shot dead by members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary within a five-week period, said The Times. In response to a public outcry, the Government launched an independent inquiry – and in 1984, John Stalker, who has died aged 79, was appointed to head it. At that time the deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester police, Stalker was greeted on arrival in Belfast by Sir John Hermon, the RUC chief constable, who gave him a whispered warning: “Remember, Mr Stalker, you are in a jungle now.” And so it proved. Within two years, it seems he had “uncovered things that were not meant to be uncovered”, and before his findings could be published, he…

There’s a lot at stake in the latest boardroom wrangle titillating fans of corporate melodrama. Some 68,000 jobs globally, to be precise, said Frances Coppola in Forbes. After a headlong expansion spree, the giant British outsourcing firm Interserve is once again “on the brink of collapse”, with unmanageable debts of £631m. The board argues that the only way to stave off administration is a draconian “deleveraging plan”, in which shareholdings would be “all but wiped” and control would be ceded to banking creditors. Unsurprisingly, shareholders aren’t happy. The largest, the US hedge fund Coltrane, has been gunning for “an alternative proposal” that would partly protect investors and “force much larger losses onto lenders”. The warring parties were scheduled to slug the matter out on Friday. CEO Debbie White “has had…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares Avon Rubber Investors Chronicle Avon’s two main lines of business are respiratory protection (such as gas masks) and milking equipment. Very cash-generative with healthy margins, which means R&D spending should continue. Buy. £12.35. British American Tobacco Investors Chronicle Tobacco firms are threatened by tough regulation and a decline of cigarette smoking. Yet, despite “sky-high” debt, BAT is cash generative and investing heavily in “next-generation products”. Yields about 8%. Buy. £30.31. DS Smith The Times This recycled fibre packaging producer is “firing on all cylinders” in fast-growing and resilient sectors, including e-commerce. It has sold its plastics business and is thriving in the US. Yields 4.5%. Buy. 362p. Eaton Corp The Daily Telegraph This “unfashionable” US industrials conglomerate has a variety of fast-growing specialist…

A decision to allow women Morris dancers to dance with men has outraged traditionalists, reports The Daily Telegraph. Hardliners have even threatened to leave The Morris Ring – their governing body – over the move. “Women are a different physical shape to men,” said Barry Care of the Moulton Morris Men. “Their centre of gravity is in a different place. It just doesn’t look right. I’m afraid that The Morris Ring has lost its way. It’s become mixed up in feminist politics, that’s the problem.” Envelopes are now so little used, they have fallen out of the ONS’s “shopping basket” of 720 goods and services used to calculate the cost of living. Additions to this year’s list include smart speakers, bakeware and pre-made popcorn.…

Alexandria, Virginia Manning jailed: Chelsea Manning, the former US army intelligence analyst who leaked 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, has been sent to jail for refusing to testify in a grand jury investigation into the whistleblowing group. A transgender woman formerly known as Bradley Manning, she said she had refused to testify because she objects to the secrecy of the grand jury process and because she had already told the authorities all she knew during her 2013 court martial. Before her sentence was commuted by President Obama, Manning, 31, had served four years of a 35-year sentence plus three years in pretrial detention. She will remain in prison until she agrees to testify or the grand jury investigation ends. Alexandria, Virginia Manafort jailed: Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald…

“I love books, but I hate World Book Day. The aim is noble: to provide all children with a book for themselves. The reality for many parents is the sense of dread that arrives when it becomes clear that all primary-age children are expected to go to class dressed as their favourite book character. For those not inclined to spend hours creating bespoke outfits, the answer lies with a bit of internet shopping, with manufacturers having cashed in on the desires of small children to look like the Gruffalo. There is an irony in this, of course: you might think that money spent on a costume could perhaps be diverted into buying, well, a book or two. Just a thought.” Will Gore in The Independent…

How feminism degenerated into narcissism Tanya Gold The Daily Telegraph Fifteen years ago, feminism was a serious business: it meant campaigning for key principles such as equal pay, equal responsibility for childcare and greater female representation in Parliament, says Tanya Gold. It meant admiring those, like Harriet Harman, who advanced that agenda. How things have changed. Once a political movement, it’s now little more than a fashionable badge or a silly marketing opportunity. Today everyone proudly calls themselves a feminist, as if merely asserting the fact helps advance the cause. Yet what many refer to as feminism isn’t feminism at all, but “an awful kind of narcissism” that espouses indiscriminate admiration for women. It’s also a way for companies to burnish their brand. Never mind that Starbucks uses zero-hours contracts,…

British patient “cured” of HIV A British patient has become only the second person to have HIV eliminated from their body, reports The Guardian. Like Timothy Brown, who was “cured” of the virus in Germany in 2007, the unnamed patient became free of it after undergoing a stem cell transplant. Although the transplant’s purpose was to treat life-threatening cancer, doctors hoped that if the stem cells came from a donor with a genetic resistance to HIV, they might clear the virus at the same time. Writing in the journal Nature, the UCL team describe inserting stem cells with a mutation of the CCR5 gene – which normally provides an entry point for HIV into white blood cells – into the patient’s bone marrow. He continued on antiretroviral drugs for more…

Northern Ireland: a second-rate minister Karen Bradley has pulled off quite a feat, said The Guardian. The Northern Ireland Secretary has made Chris Grayling look like a safe pair of hands. Last year, she set alarm bells ringing when she admitted that until recently, she had known so little about Northern Ireland, she hadn’t realised it votes on sectarian lines; even worse came last week, when she told MPs that the killings committed by security forces during the Troubles were not “crimes”, but the actions of people “fulfilling their duties in a dignified and appropriate way”. Of course, we should not forget that the paramilitaries killed far more people than the security forces. But it was a “dirty war on all sides”. It’s unhelpful enough that some MPs spring reflexively…

Six Nations: the case for relegation England must give thanks to the “rugby gods”, said Stuart Barnes in The Times. They have delivered a “genuine gift”: Joe Cokanasiga, the 21-year-old Bath wing who made his first Six Nations start last Saturday in England’s 57-14 win over Italy. Wings are to rugby what centre forwards are to football – to steal the show, they usually have to “rack up the scores”. But Cokanasiga didn’t score a single try, said Mick Cleary in The Sunday Telegraph. Instead, the Fiji-born player did something even more impressive: “he took the breath away every time he touched the ball”. At 6ft 4in, and weighing 18-and-a-half stone, Cokanasiga is intimidatingly big. But he’s remarkably fast for a player of his size, and is capable of “skilful…

To The Times Further to the letters on knife crime and school exclusions, the facts remain that pupils excluded from school are twice as likely to carry a knife, and 63% of prisoners report having been excluded in their youth. For many children, school is the only place with the promise of a hot meal and the stability that they are missing at home. Without the care and supervision of our schools, all of these children are infinitely more vulnerable. An average of 40 students are permanently excluded from school each day. This has risen by 40% over the past three years to a total of 7,720 a year. Children with special educational needs account for about half of all permanent and temporary exclusions. Debating causation is a red herring:…

Best books… John Lanchester The journalist and novelist picks five of his favourite thrillers. He is talking about his new novel, The Wall – set in a post-environmental catastrophe Britain – at the Stratford Literary Festival on 28 April (stratlitfest.co.uk) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883 (Penguin £6.99). Stevenson pulls off the difficult trick of being both a roaringly successful storyteller and a writer’s writer. Treasure Island is an extended masterclass in how to write translucent prose. It also has one of the most thrillingly ambivalent villains/ heroes in all literature, Long John Silver. Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, 1936 (Virago £8.99). It’s not clear that the English novel has a better pure storyteller than du Maurier. Jamaica Inn is a novel about hard lives and the lengths…

Who the Hell is Hamish? The latest podcast from The Australian (which was behind the hit true crime podcast The Teacher’s Pet) is an exposé of a Sydney surfer dude who swindled his way to a multimillion-dollar fortune by duping victims worldwide. Fatwa Fascinating ten-part series looking at the fallout from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which included the murder of a Japanese translator and an arson attack on a Turkish hotel, which killed 37 people. On BBC Sounds.…

New cars: what the critics say The Daily Telegraph Reinvigorating the family hatchback market, Mazda’s VW Golf-rivalling 3 is “far slinkier, sportier and sexier than anything else of its type”. Under the sleek bonnet, though, Mazda has ignored the trend for low-capacity turbocharged engines, and stuck to a naturally aspirated 2-litre petrol one (alongside a 1.8-litre diesel), assisted by a mild hybrid system for smoother stops and starts. Autocar The 3’s look is certainly a “talking point”, with its low nose and “elegant” form. The interior has a “delicate minimalism” to it, and a premium feel. Responding to research suggesting touchscreens make drivers lean over too much, Mazda has used an intuitive rotary controller for the central screen. It’s a small car, though, with the sloping roof cutting some rear…

Provident Financial/NSF: sub-prime bid They’re calling it the “Dad’s Army” bid, said Liam Kelly in The Sunday Times. Five years after quitting the doorstep lender he built into a FTSE 100 company, John van Kuffeler, 70, is on a quest to wrest back control and restore Provident Financial’s battered fortunes. Van Kuffeler, who now runs a smaller rival, Non-Standard Finance, “caught many in the City by surprise” with his lowball £1.3bn bid. While it was firmly rejected last month, he battles on regardless. It doesn’t look like easy going, said Aimee Donnellan on Reuters Breakingviews, particularly now the City watchdog is getting stuck in. The Financial Conduct Authority doesn’t like the sniff of van Kuffeler’s plans to reintroduce “incentives” for doorstep agents, warning they “could put customers at greater risk”.…

Will Boeing’s plane be kept on the tarmac? David Fickling Bloomberg The plane crash in Ethiopia marked the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet in four months. And though the United States says there is “no basis” for a worldwide grounding, says David Fickling, there’s “a very real risk” that there will be one. That would be a considerable setback for Boeing: the bestselling £90m model is core to its business. Indeed, its success is one reason why Boeing shares were trading at a near-record high before the crash. The 737 Max 8 won’t be the first passenger aircraft to suffer serious problems soon after entry into service. The key question is whether it ends up like the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, which was forever “dogged” by…

Stocks to hold for a “bad” Brexit The likely fall in the pound would boost companies with international earnings Royal Dutch Shell The oil giant’s “global portfolio of assets means that it should be well placed to weather any Brexit storm”, says Brewin Dolphin’s Guy Foster. Kromek Specialises in nuclear detection and medical-imaging gear. “Its products are being introduced across the world,” says Gervais Williams of the Miton UK Smaller Companies Fund. Diageo Well known to investors as a relatively safe haven, the international drinks giant is enjoying double-digit growth in key markets. Stocks to hold for a “good” Brexit Battered UK-focused stocks could do well out of an agreed deal Legal & General The currently low share price doesn’t reflect the quality of the business, says Foster. “Brexit clarity…