Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1223 i The Week

What happened The Halloween extension As expected, EU leaders agreed last week to grant the UK a further delay in the Brexit process. President Macron of France argued at the emergency summit for a short extension of a few weeks, while others, including Chancellor Merkel of Germany, pushed for a delay of a year or so. They settled on a six-month extension until 31 October. The UK could leave earlier if Theresa May succeeds in getting MPs to endorse her Brexit deal or a version of it. Donald Tusk, the European Council president, said his “message to British friends” was “please do not waste this time”. May acknowledged that the Brexit delays had caused “huge frustration” in the UK, and promised to press on with efforts to find a Commons…

Nearly 100,000 people in the UK have signed up to learn the fictional language of High Valyrian – as spoken on Game of Thrones – on the app Duolingo. That’s more than speak Scottish Gaelic. The course, which features more than 2,000 words, is voiced by David Peterson, the linguist who created High Valyrian for the hit TV show, though he can’t converse in it himself. “I know the grammar very, very well, but when it comes to speaking stuff off the cuff – no, I really need practice.” Co-op has created a gender-neutral “gingerbread person”, and has asked its customers to suggest a name for it. The only stipulations are that names must not be gender-specific, and must work year-round, so that the biscuit can be given seasonal costumes.…

Police in Oregon answered an emergency call from a man who reported a burglary in progress after hearing strange noises and the closing of a bathroom door. Officers surrounded the building, and after ten minutes of shouting for the intruder to surrender, decided to go in with guns drawn. “Last chance – come out now or you’re going to get bit!” they yelled. Finally, they flung open the bathroom door – only to find a robotic vacuum cleaner hard at work. “Every situation... you treat it as if it’s real,” said Sgt. Daniel DiPietro. “This one had a lot of indication that it was.” A Taiwanese doctor treating a woman for a painfully swollen eye was surprised to find four tiny sweat bees living inside the socket. The woman, who…

INDIA How Modi has blackened the nation’s soul Al Jazeera (Doha) The world’s largest democracy is heading to the polls, says Rana Ayyub. The election began in India last Thursday and will end on 19 May, during which time some 900 million eligible voters will choose between nearly 10,000 candidates. The vote will decide not only the composition of the Lok Sabha (House of the People), but the future of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is seeking another five-year term for his Hindu nationalist party. Let us hope the voters turn him down. Modi has changed the country for the worse. His administration may have brought in some business-friendly reforms, but it has failed to improve the lot of most Indians and has deliberately stirred up communal tensions. Under Modi,…

Astronomers have captured the first picture of a black hole – in a galaxy 55 million light years away. First theorised more than a century ago by Einstein, black holes are regions of densely packed matter from which nothing – including light – can escape. While this makes black holes themselves invisible, they are surrounded by rings of dust and gas, which are superheated as they are sucked in by the immense gravitational pull. These “halos” are among the brightest objects in the universe, making them theoretically possible to see – with sufficiently powerful telescopes. And now one has been captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, a network of eight radio telescopes spread across the world. The image traces the outline of a supermassive black hole – believed to be…

Kim Kardashian West (pictured) is following in her father’s footsteps: she’s training for the law. The late Robert Kardashian was a successful lawyer who played a key role in the 1995 acquittal of O.J. Simpson for murder: “My dad had a library, and when you pushed this wall there was this whole hidden closet room, with all of his O.J. evidence books. On weekends I’d snoop and look through.” Kardashian West says she finds legal concepts easy to grasp. “The reading is what really gets me. It’s so time-consuming.” Benedict Cumberbatch got a slap in the face recently – from a 63-year-old retired fisherman. The actor was reportedly driving a Lamborghini down a lane in the Isle of Wight when he knocked Michael “Scooby” Lawrence, off his bike. Shocked to…

Golf: Tiger roars again “Lazarus has competition,” said Ewan Murray in The Guardian. On Sunday, 11 years after winning his last major – and two years after saying he was done with golf – Tiger Woods won the Masters. Even by his standards, it was an “extraordinary” triumph. And it “seemed poetic” that it happened at Augusta, the very place where Woods “began altering the shape of golf” 22 years ago. At the age of 43, he has claimed his 15th major – leaving him only three short of Jack Nicklaus’s all-time record. Until very recently, “Woods was, in the eyes of even his most fervent admirers, washed-up”, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. He had gone through “sex addiction therapy, the collapse of his marriage, back pain, knee…

To The Times When I read your article on the black hole (“Humanity gets first glimpse of one-way door out of universe”) in the M87 galaxy from the Event Horizon Telescope, two things immediately came to mind. First, Arthur Eddington’s experimental verification of the general theory of relativity 100 years ago when, in an elegant experiment performed at the time of the total solar eclipse on 29 May 1919, he demonstrated that massive bodies such as the Sun could “bend” light more than would have been predicted by Newtonian mechanics. Second, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s thoughts on witnessing the first atomic explosion at Trinity on 16 July 1945, when he is said to have reflected on the words of the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”…

Best books… Monisha Rajesh The travel writer and journalist picks her six favourite books. She is talking about her latest book, Around the World in 80 Trains (Bloomsbury £20), on 28 May at the Hay Festival (23 May-2 June; hayfestival.com) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, 1997 (Harper Perennial £8.99). The first Indian woman to win the Booker Prize, Roy defied all the rules of language with brazen confidence and enviable ease. She made me want to write. The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi, 1990 (Faber £8.99). “My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost.” I never felt this way when I was growing up, always assured of my identity. But as far as opening lines go, none better sums up…

Pa Lo-style braised pork, eggs and kale Serves 6 20 white peppercorns 3 coriander roots, coarsely chopped 4 small or 2 large garlic cloves 2 tbsps vegetable oil 500g pork belly, cut into large pieces, or a combination of pork belly and pork ribs 1 tbsp five-spice powder 4 tbsps sweet dark soy sauce 4 tbsps nam pla (fish sauce) 3 tbsps palm sugar 6-8 pieces of fried tofu (available in Asian food stores), each about 4cm square 12 hard-boiled quail’s eggs (or 6 hen’s), peeled salt a bunch of greens – chard, kale, pak choi • Pound the peppercorns, coriander roots and garlic together in a pestle and mortar to make a paste. • Pour 3 pints of water into a large stock pot and bring to the boil.…

A family adventure Croatia With its beautiful islands, beaches and historic towns, the southern Dalmatian coast “ticks boxes for all ages”, and UTracks’ eight-day family cycling trip lets you explore it without demanding too much of small legs. Guests stay on a boat, cruising between the islands of Hvar, Vis, Korcula and Brac, and biking to swimming spots. Highlights include a workshop with a local apiarist, and the chance to raft the forested Cetina canyon, on the mainland. Visit utracks.com/cfa. Mountain temples Bhutan Mountain Kingdoms’ 18-day guided tour of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan meanders east from the charming town of Paro to Bumthang, home to some of the country’s most important temples. The route takes you past snow-capped peaks and over high passes; highlights include the Tiger’s Nest monastery…

Pinterest: Easter bunny What’s the current appetite “for fast-growing, highly valued start-ups that are burning cash”? Ask Pinterest, said DealBook in The New York Times. The digital pinboard company, co-founded by CEO Ben Silbermann, 36, was due to come to the market this week and is likely to be “a barometer for IPOs to come” – including Uber, Slack and Postmates. Pinterest is “a slightly different breed of unicorn” to some of the other big tech names currently going public. For a start, it is “burning less cash” and, after Lyft’s recent debacle (shares have tumbled to 17% below last month’s offer price), it has also taken the precaution of pricing the float relatively conservatively. It hopes to be valued at $11.3bn – below the $12bn value placed on…

How the City lost the battle for Europe Cat Rutter Pooley and Patrick Jenkins Financial Times With few exceptions, no one now expects the City to achieve “anything like the ambitious partnership” it hoped for with the EU, say Cat Rutter Pooley and Patrick Jenkins. What a contrast to the gung-ho “travelling caravan” that toured European capitals in early 2018 telling locals: “you need us”. So how did the City come to screw up “one of the most crucial lobbying campaigns in its history”? Put it down to arrogance and misplaced trust in the Government. The initial “big hope” was that a principle called “mutual recognition” – allowing the UK to set its own rules while retaining access to EU markets – would prevail. Lobbyists realised Brussels “hated” the plan,…

Hallelujah, hallelujah – it’s never been easier to invest ethically. Here, David Byers of The Times rounds up some “alternative routes” for your cash that should help others too Oikocredit A worldwide co-operative, privately financed by individuals and institutions, which “encourages low-income people to improve their livelihoods”, and has “a reliable and consistent record of investor returns”. Together Group This “community interest company” creates full-time jobs for ex-offenders – employing them to renovate properties and build homes. It’s helped lower reoffending rates. Abundance and Triodos Both are ethical lenders, offering investments via crowdfunding in projects from affordable housing to clean energy. Resonance Works to raise capital for “small social enterprises with a regional focus”. Locally focused energy co-ops Outfits like Oxfordshire’s Southill Community Energy aim to help local people reduce…

Controversy of the week Netanyahu wins again “Make it official: henceforth, the Hebrew word for magician is Bibi,” said The Economist. And last week, 69-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu pulled off his most spectacular trick yet. Despite three corruption cases “hanging over him” – for bribery, fraud and breach of trust – he won a record fifth term as Israel’s prime minister. His right-wing Likud party and its religious and nationalist allies together won a majority of 65 seats in the 120-member Knesset, narrowly beating Benny Gantz’s liberal Blue and White alliance. Netanyahu’s “magic potion” has been a mix of “muscular nationalism with Jewish chauvinism and anti-elitism”, a brew that in the eyes of many has poisoned Israel’s politics ever since he first came to power in 1996. But the copper-bottomed popularity…

Support for the Conservative Party has fallen four points in two weeks to 28% – its lowest level since 2013. Support for Labour has risen a point, to 32%. The Liberal Democrats are on 11%, UKIP on 6%, and Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party on 8%. Change UK (formerly The Independent Group) is on 3%. In a voting-intentions poll for next month’s European elections, Labour stands at 24% and the Tories 16%. The Brexit Party and UKIP are on 15% and 14% respectively – giving them a combined score higher than that of either of the main parties. YouGov/The Times 55% of Britons do not believe that Brexit will have occurred by the newly set deadline of 31 October. 14% think it will have, and 31% don’t know. YouGov…

Jeremy Bowen’s cancer Jeremy Bowen has spent most of his adult life covering war zones for the BBC. “When I first started reporting, I had that invulnerability feeling. I was so excited – it was like being in a film,” he told Joe Shute in The Daily Telegraph. “As time went by, I realised it was a dangerous game. People I knew got killed. I still wanted to do it and still enjoyed it. But I had some moments when I thought: ‘I’m going to die now.’” There have been many close shaves. In 1994, he was nearly hit by cluster bombing in Grozny, Russia; in 2013, he was wounded by shotgun pellets in Cairo. But his lowest point came in 2000, when a car he’d been travelling in was…

The son of a Lancashire textile manufacturer, Robert Peel is often spoken of as a middle-class outlier in a party of landed gentlemen. Yet he was also a successful farmer in his own right. Born in Bury in 1788, he was educated at Harrow and Oxford – where he was the first person ever to take a double first – and entered the Commons at 21. He soon gained a name as a moderniser. Made home secretary in 1822, he reformed the law and created a modern police force – officers were named bobbies or peelers in his honour. On becoming PM in 1834, he set out his Tamworth Manifesto, which, in accepting the need for gradual reform, laid the foundations for modern conservatism. His minority administration collapsed after only…

FINLAND The myth of a happy nation Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm) In my country, to have anything good to say about life is considered “a first sign of madness”, says Anna-Lena Laurén. So we Finns are mystified to find ourselves proclaimed yet again as the happiest nation in the world. The title has been bestowed on us for a second consecutive year by the UN’s World Happiness Report. But it’s based on concrete measures such as income, life expectancy and social support, not on what Finns actually feel. It’s said that the best way for a politician to court popularity with Finnish voters is to “frown mightily” and proclaim that “everything is going to hell”. But the trouble is that most ordinary Finns – unlike our Swedish neighbours – consider it…

Four million children around the world develop asthma every year as a result of inhaling traffic fumes, new research suggests. The landmark study, by George Washington University in the US, compared levels of nitrogen dioxide (one of the main pollutants from exhausts) with asthma incidence, and used this to estimate the number of new cases of asthma linked to traffic pollution. This revealed that in the UK, about one in five new cases of child asthma are attributable to nitrogen dioxide pollution, rising to 29% in London. Out of the 194 countries studied, Britain had the 24th highest proportion of new, traffic-related cases; South Korea topped the list. The vast majority of cases – 92% – were in areas where average nitrogen dioxide concentrations are below WHO guidelines – suggesting,…

The Tories: heading for a black hole? There’s something terrifyingly relentless about Theresa May, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. No matter how bad things get, she just keeps ploughing on, “unscathed, undaunted and seemingly oblivious”. Nothing can stop her. Face it: she’s going to “remain Prime Minister until the end of time. And very likely beyond.” But if May appears indomitable, the same certainly isn’t true of her party, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. The Tories are in all sorts of trouble. “Poisonously divided” over Brexit, they are in line for a severe kicking in next month’s local council and European Parliament elections. At least some Tory Remainers are likely to defect to anti-Brexit parties, while disgusted Brexiters on the other side may end up abstaining…

Before last week, few of us had heard of Tara Moore, said Charlie Eccleshare in The Daily Telegraph. Ranked No. 481 in the world, the 26-year-old British player has only once qualified for a Grand Slam. But last Tuesday in the W25 Sunderland tournament she pulled off “one of the most remarkable comebacks in tennis history”. She’d lost the first set 0-6, was down 0-5 in the second – and her opponent, Jessika Ponchet, was on match point. Then something extraordinary occurred. Moore “completely turned the match around”. She survived the match point, “pinched” the second set 9-7, then won the third 6-3 to complete an amazing victory. She went on to win her next two matches, before being knocked out in the semi-finals. Tennis has had some legendary turnarounds,…

Wild Rose Dir: Tom Harper 1hr 38mins (15) In Jessie Buckley, a star is born ★★★★ “Stars like Jessie Buckley aren’t born every day,” said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. The young Irish actress has grit, charm and, as she proves in this “crowd-pleaser” of a drama, a singing voice to match her acting ability. Her character, Rose-Lynn, is a Glaswegian single mum, just out of prison, who believes she has what it takes to be a country singer. Should she heed the advice of her tough but tender mum (Julie Walters) and spend more time with her children, or chase her dream? There’s “fine support” from Sophie Okonedo as a well-off housewife for whom Rose-Lynn works, and the script has the virtue of being “heartfelt and honest”, said…

Chantal Joffe at Victoria Miro Chantal Joffe (b.1969) is arguably the most accomplished and widely respected portrait artist working in Britain today. Her style is difficult to pin down – she can veer from cubist-like multiple perspectives to striking precision, often in the space of a single painting – but it is instantly recognisable, a thrilling vision that is equal parts Goya, Freud, Alice Neel and Picasso. In 2018, she set herself the daunting challenge of creating a new self-portrait every day for a year – and amazingly, she held to it. This show collects the highlights of the series – dozens of images of the artist, generally cropped off at the shoulders. Although this might sound repetitive in theory, the reality is anything but. Joffe’s rendering of light…

Rosie’s christening is tense. Jim’s presence makes Shula question her sincerity and she can’t finish her sermon. Jill feels she’s being eclipsed by Robin Fairbrother, who provides the gown and organises the photos. She’s also upset that Rosie’s middle name is Grace. Johnny takes Freddie out for the evening. Freddie admits he’s been suffering from anxiety dreams and storms off after receiving a text from Russ asking where he is. Leonard’s forced to admit he can’t draw after Shula asks him to paint her horses. Jill’s amused when he confesses he bought her snowdrop picture. Lily, exasperated by Freddie’s behaviour towards Russ, explains to him exactly how unwell Elizabeth’s been. Ruairi helps Mia with her homework. They’re taking a break and playing a game of golf with teabags when Will…

The Bonnie Badger Main Street, Gullane, East Lothian (01620-621111) The much-garlanded Edinburgh chef Tom Kitchin has opened this thoroughly welcoming “pub with rooms” in Gullane, on the East Lothian coast, says Marina O’Loughlin in The Sunday Times. The main restaurant is called the Stables – and while the talented people in the kitchen are not trying to reinvent the wheel, “almost everything is as good as it can possibly be”. Haggis, neeps and tatties is not the standard blobs of offal and mash, but the “noble pudding fashioned into a hefty, peppery, deep-fried bonbon” and served on a cloud of the lightest mashed potato, with “tendrils of swede pickled into raw, acerbic crispness”. There’s a similar, classily playful take on ham, egg and chips. A big crabmeat-packed raviolo comes…

The best… Bauhaus-inspired decor Bauhaus Dessau A plaster model of the building Walter Gropius designed in 1925 to house the Bauhaus design school. Ideal for architecture buffs (£195; chiselandmouse.com). House by John Lewis Whistler dining chair With its simple, modern design, this upholstered chair from John Lewis could sit well anywhere in the house (£89; johnlewis.com). Twiggy LED floor lamp by Foscarini In designing his delicate-looking but durable Twiggy lamp, Marc Sadler was inspired by the curving form of a fishing rod (£1,655; ariashop.co.uk). Aytm Stilla table This drop-shaped table from Danish firm Aytm has a walnut top on black iron legs (£259; ariashop.co.uk). Raawii Strøm jug Made in Portugal, this jug would add colour to a pared-back dining table (£56; matchesfashion.com). Design K Zylinder teapot and Kleiner  Kreis cups…

Brilliant molecular biologist who deciphered the genetic code Sydney Brenner 1927-2019 Sydney Brenner, who has died aged 92, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research into a creature he helped make famous: the humble nematode worm. In the 1960s, he realised that Caenorhabditis elegans, a millimetre-long roundworm, would provide a useful model for studying how genes influence cellular development. Each worm has 959 cells, said The Independent, and as the worms are transparent, their rapid growth from fertilised egg to adult can easily be viewed through a microscope. Brenner and his colleagues spent years analysing the worms and their genes: they became the first animals to have their complete genomes sequenced, and their DNA has turned out to be remarkably similar to that of humans. One of the…

Britain’s largest money manager, Legal & General, which manages £1trn of UK pension fund investments, stated that the world is facing a climate catastrophe. L&G has now placed climate change at the top of its list of corporate governance concerns. The ONS reported that UK employment hit another record high in the quarter to February, taking the unemployment rate to 3.9%, the lowest level since 1975. But economists warned the record-breaking period of employment growth could be coming to an end. In the US, the quarterly banking reporting season got under way, with mixed results. Goldman Sachs revealed it had cut pay and jobs after another slump in trading led to quarterly profits falling by a fifth, to $2.25bn. There was better news at asset manager BlackRock, which had its…

Humphrey Smith If you’re nostalgic for the good old days, where better to head this Easter than a Samuel Smith pub, said The Sun. Why? Because current owner Humphrey Smith seems particularly keen “to uphold behaviour that would have been acceptable to the original Samuel Smith when he founded the brewery in 1758”. In 2017, Smith, 73, “banned punters from swearing in his boozers”. Now he has “come after” their mobile phones and tablets – prohibiting them in all 300 hostelries on grounds that “our pubs are for social conversation person to person”. In a memo to pub managers last month, Smith advised that anyone embarrassed by a call “should go outside to take it in the same way as is required with smoking”. Smith, who rarely gives interviews, has…

The Government has proposed changing the law to stop landlords from being able to evict their tenants at will, and to ensure people feel “secure in their homes”. Currently, landlords in England can use a Section 21 or “no-fault” notice to evict tenants, without giving a reason and with as little as eight weeks’ notice, once their fixed-term contract has expired. If Section 21 notices are abolished, landlords will only be able to evict their tenants if they are in rent arrears; if they have caused damage or been anti-social; or if the landlord wants to sell the property, or move into it. Eviction from a private rental is the most common reason for families becoming homeless; many tenants have reported being issued with Section 21 notices after asking their…

The Hague, Netherlands No war crimes probe for Afghanistan: The International Criminal Court has refused to open an investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, including the US’s alleged use of torture, on the grounds that there is insufficient chance of it leading to successful prosecutions. The court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, says there is evidence that US troops and the CIA tortured, abused and raped detainees in Afghanistan, and at so-called “black sites” elsewhere, from 2003 onwards. However, the US, which is not a member of the ICC, has refused to cooperate with Bensouda’s investigation, and earlier this month revoked her US visa. This week, President Trump described the ICC’s decision as a “major victory” for the “rule of law”. Rotterdam, Netherlands Fertility scandal: DNA tests have confirmed that…

“The Independent Group of MPs has suffered a catastrophic rebranding. ‘Change UK’? Yuck. What was wrong with Tiggers? ‘Change UK’ is the kind of pap you get when you pay good money to image consultants whose instinct is to market you as some kind of aftershave. I blame Chuka Umunna, and anyone else who dresses too expensively and burbles about change. I’m sick of people ‘being’ the change, wanting change, working for change, blah, blah, blah. Sod change. As an American senator once remarked, ‘When Dr Johnson described patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel, he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word reform’.” Matthew Parris in The Times…

The bazaar world of Donald Trump Janan Ganesh Financial Times Donald Trump is the friend of peace. A ridiculous thought? Not so, says Janan Ganesh. We may see him as a trigger-happy leader and long for his successor to rectify his reckless disruption of US-China relations. Yet far from being “the storm before the calm”, he may well be the reverse. Why? Because for all his belligerence towards foreign powers, his grievances boil down to one simple issue: trade. He sees the world as a “kind of polyglot bazaar”, in which the only goal is to get a good deal and not be ripped off. And however much he sounds off against other countries, this is at least a “contained obsession”, something that can be tackled through negotiation. Look at…

Do dolphins enjoy sex? Owing to the fact that they copulate year-round – even when there is no chance of conceiving – it has often been speculated that dolphins are one of the few animals that, like humans, have sex for pleasure. But while it’s not hard to find evidence of male dolphins’ pleasure in sex – they have been observed masturbating by wrapping live eels around their penises – that of females is less easy to assess. Now, though, a study of their anatomy has provided strong evidence for it. Scientists from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts analysed the remains of 11 female bottlenose dolphins that had washed ashore, and discovered not only that their clitorises are large and well developed, but that they have marked similarities to human…

“There’s no situation so bad that it can’t get worse tomorrow.” Tory MP Damian Green, quoted in The Sunday Times “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learnt about life: it goes on.” Robert Frost, quoted in the I newspaper “Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.” Actor Quentin Crisp, quoted on The Browser “The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” American actress Lucille Ball, quoted in the LA Times “Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.” Joseph Conrad, quoted on Forbes “In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.” W.H. Auden, quoted in The Independent “Modest about our national pride – and…

When prison is preferred To The Guardian As a criminal defence solicitor representing clients in the magistrates’ court, it is clear to me that the majority of offenders given short-term sentences are sent to prison either because they ask to be sent, or because they have failed to comply with a community order. The shortage of hostel accommodation and difficulty in securing housing results in a sense of hopelessness for those caught up in the criminal justice system who cannot secure housing after being released from prison. Similarly, the privatisation of the probation service has resulted in low-risk offenders in my area being required to attend probation appointments on an industrial estate outside the town centre. Sadly, for a lot of my clients being sent to prison is a more…

kaddish.com by Nathan Englander Weidenfeld & Nicolson 224pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £15.99 Nathan Englander is the “funniest of the present crop of Jewish-American writers”, said Tanjil Rashid in The Times. And in his hilarious new novel, he tackles an enduring Jewish theme: fathers and sons. Larry is a lapsed “New York Jew” whose dad has just died. To fulfil his obligations, he’s required to recite the Kaddish (mourning prayer) for a year, but all he wants to do is watch porn and masturbate. (In one “gross-out scene” recalling Portnoy’s Complaint, he disposes of his semen in a fish tank.) When Larry discovers kaddish.com, a website that allows errant sons to pay a proxy to recite their prayers, his problems appear to be over. Except it doesn’t quite turn out…

Bond 25. That’s the working title for the next instalment in the adventures of 007, said Richard Brooks in The Observer. Few films have had such a chequered production history. First, Daniel Craig, Bond himself, declared he’d rather “slash his wrists” than reprise his role as Ian Fleming’s secret agent. Then, after he’d been won over, the director, Danny Boyle, walked out, apparently because the script he’d favoured had been rejected by the producers. And now, weeks before filming is due to start, it seems the script is going to get another rewrite, allegedly because Craig feels it lacks humour. Reportedly, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, star and writer of the hit TV show Fleabag, has been parachuted in to save it. Craig, a fan, is said to have met up with her…

Created by one of Italy’s leading artists for Milan Design Week, it was meant to be a critique of the patriarchy. But Gaetano Pesce’s Maestà Sofferente (Suffering Majesty) has instead outraged feminists, says Hannah McGivern in The Art Newspaper. The eight-metre-high work, based on an iconic chair design of 1969, shows a chained woman’s torso struck with arrows and under attack by wild animals. Pesce saw it as an image embodying women’s suffering and ”the prejudice of men”. But the feminist group Non Una Di Meno (Not One Less) begged to differ. After the unveiling outside the city’s cathedral last week, it staged a protest with placards that read: “Ceci n’est pas une femme” (“This is not a woman”). One “artivist” then threw red varnish over Maestà Sofferente: it was…

Programmes The Importance of Being Oscar This docudrama brings together a starry cast – including Anna Chancellor and Freddie Fox – to explore Oscar Wilde’s dazzling career and his tragic demise. Sat 20 April, BBC2 21:00 (85mins). Faithfull: The Marianne Faithfull Story Repeat of Sandrine Bonnaire’s absorbing portrait of the legendary singer and former Rolling Stones muse. Mon 22 April, BBC4 01:00 (65mins). Sara Pascoe Live: LadsLadsLads The finale of the comedian’s recent tour, a winningly funny account of her painful split from a fellow comedian. Mon 22 April, BBC2 22:00 (80mins). John Lee Hooker: The Boogie Man Film charting the life of the blues singer and his impact on 20th century music. Keith Richards and Van Morrison contribute. Fri 26 April, BBC4 21:00 (60mins). The Looming Tower Gripping ten-part…

The perfumed nebbiolo grape, from Piedmont, is used to make barolo and barbaresco, two of Italy’s greatest reds, says Jane MacQuitty in The Times. Top-drawer nebbiolo wines are expensive. But there’s value to be found in some Langhe nebbiolos, from just outside the barolo and barbaresco borders. For example, try GD Vajra’s “gorgeous, silky, pickled-damson and red plum-packed” 2017 Langhe Nebbiolo (£21.17; Vivino). Sottimano’s floral, savoury 2016 Langhe Nebbiolo is also delicious (£22.95; Lea & Sandeman). And the 2017 Langhe Nebbiolo De Forville (£11.99; Majestic) is vibrant, crunchy, fruity – and excellent value. For a decent value barolo-proper, I’d suggest the “silky, marjoram and spice box-styled” 2014 Barolo, La Morra, Ciabot Berton (£30; Majestic). And for a barbaresco, I recommend the 2014 Taste the Difference Barbaresco (£13.50; Sainsbury’s), with its…

Virgin Trains could “disappear from Britain’s railways” after more than two decades because its operating partner, Stagecoach, has been banned from bidding for future franchises, owing to a row over pensions, said James Rodger in the Birmingham Mail. The move sparked a furious reaction from the two companies, who are considering legal action. Stagecoach said it had been disqualified from three bids (the East Midlands, South Eastern and the West Coast Partnership it currently runs with Virgin) after falling out with the Department for Transport over the level of liabilities it should assume for a £6bn deficit in the Railways Pension Scheme. Stagecoach boss Martin Griffiths accused ministers of “making it up as they go along”. That looks like “fair comment”, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. Transport Secretary Chris…