Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1252 i The Week

What happened The Farage factor Campaigning officially began this week for the 12 December election, prompting immediate clashes over the issue of Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn claimed Boris Johnson’s EU exit deal would “unleash Thatcherism on steroids” and lead the NHS to be sold off to US firms. The Labour leader said he would negotiate a better deal and then put it to the public in another referendum. The Prime Minister, who has repeatedly denied that the NHS will be on the table in US trade talks, dismissed Corbyn’s plan, saying it would cause further uncertainty and take the country “back to square one”. The Tories’ hopes of winning a majority were dealt a blow last week, when Nigel Farage vowed to field Brexit Party candidates in every seat unless the…

Olivia Newton-John, after the tight black trousers and leather jacket she wore in the final scenes of the 1978 film Grease sold at auction for $405,700 – more than double the expected price. The money will go to her breast cancer treatment centre in Australia. In the same auction, in Los Angeles, a Grease poster signed by the film’s cast went for $64,000, against an estimate of $1,000. The Bee Gees, who are to get their own big-screen biopic. The rights to the three brothers’ story and music have been bought from Barry Gibb, the sole surviving Bee Gee, by the producer behind the smash-hit Queen film Bohemian Rhapsody.…

The Government has been accused of suppressing a parliamentary report into allegations of Russian interference in the EU referendum and the 2017 election. The report, by the Intelligence and Security Committee, was referred to the Government on 17 October, but it won’t release it until after polling day. It insists this is for security reasons; however, critics suspect the report is being delayed because it contains information that could harm the Tories’ election chances.…

Washington DC Democrat wobbles: The Democrats’ most senior elected politician, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (pictured), has warned that the sweeping healthcare and tax reforms backed by two of the leading candidates for the party’s presidential nomination – Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders – could play disastrously in next year’s election. “What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” said Pelosi, referring to one of the crucial swing states won by Donald Trump in 2016. Last week, the former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke quit the Democrat race, while Kamala Harris, who briefly became a front runner in the summer, following a strong performance in the first TV debate, has scaled back her campaign. That leaves the inexperienced Pete Buttigieg as the leading next-generation candidate. Meanwhile, Joe…

“Here’s an example of why Idon’t think governments take global heating seriously. Sports utility vehicles (SUVs) are the second largest contributor to the increase in global carbon emissions since 2010, the International Energy Agency has revealed, ahead of heavy industry, and far ahead of aviation. Sales of these monstrosities rise constantly. They now account for 40% of annual car sales against 20% a decade ago. The average emissions for an SUV are 10% more than for other cars. It would be simple – and good for road safety – to ban sales of new SUVs. No government, as far as I know, has even considered this. Do we have a climate emergency or not?”…

Our red meat is greener than their avocados Joe Stanley The Guardian We farmers have had a bum rap lately, says Joe Stanley. As we produce red meat, the current “bête noire of the environmentalist movement”, we’re classed as an enemy in the battle against climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. UK farming as a whole may contribute some 10% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, but the permanent pasture that makes up 70% of our farmland also acts as a vast carbon sink. Grassland absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere as grass grows and sequesters it in the soil as organic matter. The livestock that grazes this land is “among the most sustainable in the world”. In stark contrast to animals reared intensively in the Amazon basin…

Painkillers for depression Taking aspirin or ibuprofen every day can help relieve the symptoms of depression, a new study has found. Researchers in China looked at 30 previous studies examining the impact of anti-inflammatory drugs on patients who’d suffered major depressive disorders. They considered not only non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) – a class that includes many over-the-counter painkillers – but also others with anti-inflammatory properties, such as statins. The NSAIDs appeared to make the most difference: taking a 400mg daily dose appeared to be 79% more effective than a placebo at eliminating depressive symptoms, and 52% more effective at reducing their overall severity. But most of the other treatments seemed to have apositive impact, and also appeared to boost the effectiveness of anti-depressants when taken at the same time. While…

Field Marshal Montgomery had little doubt about his own importance, according to the second volume of the writer Kenneth Rose’s diaries. When Monty visited a school in Essex, one of the pupils took some photos of him and offered to send him copies. How, he asked, should he address the envelope? “‘Field Marshal Montgomery, England’ will do,” the old soldier replied. And then, after a moment’s reflection, “Better put ‘Hampshire’ as well.” Jamie Lee Curtis made her name in the classic 1978 horror film Halloween, and appeared in a sequel as recently as 2018. But she has admitted that she is no fan of the genre herself. “I scare very easily [and] I don’t like to be frightened,” she told the Daily Mail. “I find nothing charming about it and…

“Around the world, 2019 has been ayear ofpublic protest,” said Ian Bremmer in Time magazine, “and in some countries, it’s not hard to understand why.” In Hong Kong, people are furious about Chinese interference; in Algeria and Sudan, they’re venting their frustration with decades of dictatorship; in Iraq and Lebanon, the issue is endemic corruption. But what have the Chileans got to be so angry about? They live in one of the “most peaceful and prosperous countries” in South America, yet student-led protests last month against a rise insubway fares in the capital, Santiago, have escalated into weeks of demonstrations, riots and vandalism. One protest drew more than a million people onto the streets. “Startled Chileans have seen nothing like this since the end of thePinochet dictatorship nearly three decades…

“It was the mother of all anti-climaxes,” said Nik Simon in The Mail on Sunday. So much was expected of England inthis World Cup final: their extraordinary victory over New Zealand, a week earlier, made them the clear favourites against South Africa. “But in truth, they never turned up.” Having “gripped the nation” en route to this match, Eddie Jones’s men were “gripped by the throat”: they didn’t lead for a single second, and lost the match 32-12. “By the time English bodies dropped to the floor at the final whistle, it was the biggest final defeat since 1999.” We’re used to England starting matches well, said Owen Slot in The Times. Not this one. “I cannot recall a game in which they started worse.” And it didn’t get much…

To The Guardian Your article took me back to my 1950s childhood in inner-city Leeds. We hardly saw a blade of grass, but had a wonderful time scrambling among the general dereliction of postwar slum-clearance and building sites. We were like mountain goats running over tipper-truck mounds of cobblestones, dumped as streets were cleared, en route to school. The cobbles were edged with gas-tar, so we had modelling material (it came off hands with a rub of margarine paper). Access to the waterworks depot was by shinning up a drainpipe and over the wall; huge concrete pipes were great to run through. A very smooth bit of road surface alongside our Sweet Street flats was ideal for roller-skating – and there was so little traffic so no danger. But the…

Luigi Ghirri at Thomas Dane Gallery At first glance, the work of the Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943-92) might not leap out at you; so quiet and unshowy are his pictures that it’s easy to miss their subtle beauty and exquisite use of colour. Indeed, as this wonderful exhibition demonstrates, he had an astonishing eye for composition, and could turn the most mundane subject matter into fascinating images. Colazione sull’Erba brings together a body of work Ghirri created in the early 1970s, when he devoted himself to exploring the humdrum suburbs of his hometown of Modena and took dozens of photographs of car parks, gardens, patios, courtyards and front windows. He focused on the kind of modest details most would ignore – flowers curled around an iron fence, painted windowsills,…

Once viewed as safe (going on boring), Chilean wine has “reinvented itself”, says Jane MacQuitty in The Times. A shift to cooler regions and higher vineyards has increased quality “dramatically” – and Chile has now overtaken France as our fourth biggest wine supplier. Not long ago, “jammy Chilean merlot” dominated, but now there are some terrific black pepper-spiced syrahs and gorgeous cabernet sauvignon blends. Check out Waitrose’s “brilliant” Caballo Loco Apalta 2015, an exclusive blend of carmenere and cabernet sauvignon that’s “well worth £22.99”. Chile is “even cracking” malbec – try Cono Sur’s “elegant” Bicicleta Malbec 2018 (£7.50; Morrisons). And it’s the same with white wines: even cheaper bottles of sauvignon blanc, such as Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Chilean Sauvignon (£7.50), have a“restrained, zesty spin”. Most excitingly, long-lost grape varieties…

● Bring tender plants under cover to a cool porch, conservatory or a sunny, cool room. ● Cut perennials that have collapsed or become scruffy back to the ground, and weed around them. Cover them with a blanket of mulch, such as spent mushroom compost, to protect them and feed the soil. ● To protect dahlias from frost, lift their tubers out and store them indoors. ● To prune climbing roses, remove dead stems, cut those that are crossing and rubbing each other, and tie in young shoots that will flap about in poor weather. ● To create a nutritious mulch, collect fallen leaves and run over them with a mower on a high setting, then leave them in a black plastic bag with a few holes in it. ●…

A short drive from pretty (“and, these days, pretty overrun”) Cotswolds villages such as Broadway, Dormy House is supremely chic, but “blessedly relaxed” too, says Anna Murphy in The Times. Rooms are divided between an old farmhouse (“all nooks and crannies”) and a modern building that’s “all about straight lines and spaciousness” – but are united by “good taste”. Food also varies in style, from an eight-course tasting menu in the tiny new MO restaurant to the “posh-pub-grub” at The Potting Shed, but is “great” at both. The spa is among the very best in the UK, and the service is “charming”. Doubles from £269 b&b.dormyhouse.co.uk.…

Robert Evans 1930-2019 Robert Evans was already a millionaire when, in 1956, he was spotted sunbathing by a hotel pool in Los Angeles by the 1940s screen icon Norma Shearer. Noting his resemblance to her late husband, the producer Irving Thalberg, she asked him if he would like to play Thalberg in a new film. The bronzed Evans, who ran a women’s fashion business in New York, shot back that he was not an actor: he was “in ladies’ pants”. And he would always remain so, in every sense, said The Times. However, he followed up onthe idea, and made the film. But while he had matinee idol looks, his talents as anactor were so limited that on the set of his next film, The Sun Also Rises (1957), his…

As the UK general election campaign got under way last week, the FTSE 100 climbed upwards, buoyed by new stock-market highs on Wall Street, where traders cheered the US Fed’s third interest rate cut of the year, and renewed optimism about the US economy and trade talks with China. Sterling recorded its best performance in more than a decade in October, recovering to touch the $1.30 mark as the risk of a no-deal Brexit receded. But traders remain braced for a possibly turbulent election campaign. Saudi Aramco launched its IPO process, billed as “the world’s biggest stock flotation”. The trillion-dollar oil giant plans to list just 1%-2% of its shares on the Saudi Tadawul market on 11 December in a float that’s been criticised as “the ultimate marriage of carbon…

BoE front runners The appointment of the next Bank of England governor may have been postponed until after the general election, but that hasn’t stopped feverish speculation, said Jim Armitage in the London Evening Standard. By late last week, three names were being talked about as front runners for the job, “which is in the gift of the Chancellor”: Dame Minouche Shafik (pictured), Raghuram Rajan (formerly head of the Reserve Bank of India) and Sir Paul Tucker. Shafik, currently the director of the London School of Economics, is a former deputy governor with previous form at the IMF and World Bank. She clearly has the experience to become the Bank’s first female governor. “But it would be madness to put money on anyone in this race.” The field of “appointable”…

Controversy of the week High hopes for Hoyle The appointment of the new Speaker “is proof that politics in Britain right now really is topsy-turvy”, said Paul Waugh on Huffington Post. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, a privately educated knight of the realm and the son of an MP, may sound like an “archetypal Tory” –but he is in fact the Labour MP for Chorley in Lancashire, and has been since 1997. Yet “in a neat inversion of John Bercow’s election ten years ago, when Labour votes ensured an Opposition backbencher got the job”, it was Tory votes that secured the role for Hoyle; he beat Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda, by 325-213 in the final vote, having seen off five other candidates, including Harriet Harman and Eleanor Laing. Hoyle…

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was accused of crass insensitivity (and worse) for suggesting, in an interview about Grenfell Tower, that if he were in a major fire, he would have the “common sense” to leave the building, whatever the fire brigade advised. He swiftly apologised, and claimed his words had been misinterpreted. However, the damage was then compounded by Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who said Rees-Mogg had meant what he seemed to be saying, and that he is cleverer than most people. Drone flyers, who must now identify and label their drones, sit an online test about safe usage and pay a £9 annual fee – or face a £1,000 fine. The new rules apply to all drones weighing more than 250g (which means only the smallest toys are exempt). Michael…

Labour’s share of the student vote has dropped to 43%, down from a high of 70% in February 2018. However, it remains the most popular party among students. The Lib Dems’ share has risen from 7% to 22% over the same period. YouthSight/The Independent As election campaigning began this week, the Tories appeared to have a commanding poll lead. An ORB International survey for The Sunday Telegraph gave the party a 36% share of the vote, with Labour on 28%, the Lib Dems on 14% and the Brexit Party on 12%. A YouGov poll put the Tories on 38%, Labour on 25%, the Lib Dems on 16%, and the Brexit Party on 11%. A separate YouGov poll found that 65% of Britons are not clear what Labour’s policy on Brexit…

My life as C-3P0 Anthony Daniels is the only living actor to have been in every one of the Star Wars films, says Cole Moreton in The Mail on Sunday. But most fans don’t know his face, because asthe fussy, grumbling droid C-3PO, he is always encased in a golden robot suit. And at first, he wasn’t even credited – although he speaks C-3PO’s lines, and came up with his distinctive voice. “Everything is tense for him, very uptight, nothing’s right,” says Daniels. “Putting the voice further up in the throat, being very tight-chested, makes him sound slightly non-human.” On set, though, the bigger challenge was his cumbersome costume. “It was incredibly lonely. I couldn’t sit down in the suit, or wander off to have a coffee between takes. I…

Chinese businessman Tan Youhui thought he had made a straightforward deal when he hired a hitman to dispose of one of his rivals for a £218,000 fee. But rather than carry out the killing, Xi Guangan decided to pass the task to another criminal – who sub-contracted it to a third. The pattern continued, with each hitman in the chain taking a cut, until a fifth was offered just £11,000 to do the deed – and felt so hard done-by he contacted the intended victim and suggested that he fake his own death. All five hitmen and Tan himself have now been convicted of attempted murder. Six firemen were needed to remove a pig from a first-floor flat in Yorkshire. Twiglet had been bought two years ago as a “micro-pig”…

BRAZIL How a murder shook the presidency Ámbito.com  (Buenos Aires) President Jair Bolsonaro has links to some of Brazil’s murderous paramilitary gangs, says Marcelo Falak – a shocking fact that is now public knowledge. One of his sons has given employment to the wife and mother of a suspected paramilitary leader. And last month, a photograph emerged of a grinning Bolsonaro standing next to a suspect in a notorious murder case – that of Marielle Franco, a campaigner against police and paramilitary killings who, it is thought, was shot dead by one of the illegal groups she’d denounced. None of this, of course, proves Bolsonaro was involved in the murder. But now he has been implicated by a TV news report claiming one of the suspects visited Bolsonaro’s flat hours…

Rats are famous for their cunning – and now, to add to their skills, they have learned to drive. A team, at the University of Richmond in Virginia, constructed a “rat-operated vehicle” (ROV) from a plastic jar mounted on wheels, with an aluminium plate across the floor and three copper “steering” bars across the “windscreen”. To drive the car, the rodents were taught, using a system of rewards, to sit on the plate and then touch the copper wire, so completing the circuit and propelling the car forwards. They could then steer using the bars. Two sets of rats were involved in the research process – one housed in an “enriched” environment with toys and exercise facilities, the other in normal lab cages. The “enriched” rats learned to drive far…

Has British politics become so toxic, even MPs can’t take it anymore? In the past few weeks, they’ve been resigning in such droves, you start to wonder if there are going to be any left to fight next month’s election, said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. So far, 65 MPs have said they won’t stand, double the number in 2017. But while it sounds a lot, if “you combine these two snap elections, the figure only just passes the number that stood down in 2015, which was a fairly normal year”. There’s always a churn, as MPs retire after decades in politics, or slink out, having realised their careers are not progressing. So what we are seeing is not a mass exodus; and though many women are among them, their…

“Samira Ahmed’s unfair pay claim has had the BBC doing some fascinating contortions,” said Jemima Lewis in The Daily Telegraph. Last week, the BBC presenter complained to a tribunal that she had been paid six times less than Jeremy Vine for doing a comparable job. As the host of the viewer feedback show Newswatch, on the BBC News channel, she is paid £440 per episode, while for the similar Points of View on BBC One, Vine got £3,000. The BBC’s first “surprising move” was to dismiss its own news channel as “relatively niche”. When Ahmed’s lawyers pointed out that Newswatch has 1.6 million viewers in total, twice as many as Vine’s programme, it tried a new position – arguing that whereas the latter is an “entertainment” show, Newswatch is merely…

Lewis Hamilton didn’t need to win the US Grand Prix, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. He knew that he had only to finish eighth to secure the World Championship, with two races to spare. But the 34-year-old still produced “a performance full of the qualities that he has made his signature”: he displayed “a cussedness” worthy of a driver chasing his very first victory. True, he didn’t win – finishing second, just four seconds behind his Mercedes team-mate, Valtteri Bottas – but that hardly mattered. In his 13th season at “the pinnacle of motor racing”, Hamilton has sealed his sixth title. That’s one more than the great Juan Manuel Fangio, and twice as many as Jackie Stewart. The only driver ahead of him –“and perhaps only for another…

Three paintings with an insurance value of £104m were abruptly removed last week from the walls of Dumfries House – the Ayrshire stately home that Prince Charles helped save for the nation – after they were alleged to be fakes. The paintings – a “Monet” (above) valued at £50m, a £42m “Picasso” and a £12m “Dalí” – had been loaned to the house, which is now part of The Prince’s Foundation, by their owner James Stunt, the bankrupt financier best known as the former husband of F1 heiress Petra Ecclestone. But now the US art forger Tony Tetro has come forward, claiming that he created the paintings and sold them to Stunt on the basis that they were expert fakes. “You can impress your friends with my pictures, decorate your…

Eddie and Alf are discussing the letter in Joe’s things. Alf is convinced Joe had an affair with the mysterious Carmen, but Eddie demurs. Alf decides he might have better luck persuading Clarrie to pursue the letter, tempting her with the prospect of a fortune. Alice is tired of Kate using her as a distraction from Jakob, so she visits Jakob and explains how mad Kate is about him. Jakob apologises to Kate and admits he likes her. At Grey Gables, Lynda notices Tracey is not herself. She is angry at the rumour that’s ruined her and Oliver’s friendship. Alf and Eddie find Carmen is a drag act at a pub named after the performer’s mother, and the potential fortune is a hangover cure recipe. Chris warns Jakob before his…

Ebi Sushi 59 Abbey Street, Derby (01332-265656) It’s easy to think of sushi as little more than “rice with raw fish on it”, says Tim Hayward in the FT. This low-key restaurant in the suburbs of Derby – a city with a large Japanese population, owing to the presence here of Toyota’s UK manufacturing plant – reveals “how much more it can be”. At five to six on the night I visited, Japanese people began streaming in: “couples, families, a pair of extremely well-heeled-looking businessmen in weekend golf gear”. The sushi was a revelation: each grain of rice had a “kind of chewy pop” to it, and the fish was “salted, cured or aged” – defying the idea that it must always be “spankingly fresh”. Meanwhile, the “heartening” list…

Bentley’s Continental GT convertible is a “classic low-speed, sunny-day cruiser”, said Steve Cropley in Autocar. The manufacturer’s “mantra” is that this car should be practical enough to drive every day (for the kind of clientele that can afford to drive it every day), and that is exactly what it delivers. Exceptionally well built – when the fabric hood is up, it’s so quiet you “might as well be in a hard top” – it’s also comfortable, beautiful inside and out, and very, very powerful. This is a“deeply impressive” car that’s like its coupé version, but with a touch of extra glamour. The all-new model is a “huge leap” ahead of its predecessor in terms of performance, said Sean Carson in Auto Express. In its third generation, the Continental GT has…

Easy to join, especially for those who use its sister platform for online dating, Bumble BFF is most commonly used by younger people. You have to check it regularly, because unanswered messages disappear after 24 hours (bumble.com/bff). Meetup helps people organise online groups for real-life gatherings. You might join a group of Londoners looking to go on a walk in the country, or people who meet to play board games, or to discuss issues of local interest (meetup.com). Patook’s bots aim to match you with similar people, and it has a “flirt filter” to stop inappropriate advances. But be warned: the explanation about how your data is used is “terrifying” (patook.com). For women only and costing £19 a year, Together Friends is a simple website pitched at slightly older users.…

Brazil’s jaguar jackpot At the Onçafari jaguar conservation project, deep in the Brazilian Pantanal – a vast area of wetland and savannah in the west of the country – visitors are almost guaranteed to see one of these endangered cats in the wild, says Sarah Marshall in The Daily Telegraph. Founded in 2011 by former British Formula 3 racing car champion Mário Haberfeld, the organisation was criticised at first for its practice of radio tagging the animals. But the scientific insights this has yielded are invaluable, and it may have deterred farmers from shooting jaguars. And the project has given the local economy a boost too. Visitors can stay at “high-end ecotourism lodges” in the Caiman Ecological Refuge, but must be prepared for safari drives in “brain-sizzling” heat. Dehouche (dehouche.com)…

Sadako Ogata 1927-2019 Sadako Ogata, who has died aged 92, was the first female United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said the FT. Known for both her compassion and her pragmatism, she took the helm in 1991, at a time when the world was ravaged by conflict and genocide, and steered the refugee agency through one of its most difficult decades. The former academic’s “petite stature (she was less than five foot tall) and mild manner masked a formidable moral vision”, said The New York Times. Within weeks of starting the job, Ogata was faced with one of the agency’s biggest crises in years, when more than a million Iraqi Kurds fled across the mountains towards Turkey and Iran. Realising that they’d not find safe haven in either of those…

Last month, SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son observed that he was “embarrassed” by his track record of making “big bets” on loss-making businesses like Uber and WeWork, said Forbes. The Japanese billionaire’s reputation as a tech investor has indeed been dented – in tandem with the declining value of holdings in his $100bn Vision fund. But now Son says he’s getting tough, said the FT. Although determined to continue identifying and backing “entrepreneurs who have the greatest vision to solve the unsolvable”, SoftBank has outlined that it may impose “new standards” of governance to keep the founders of the companies it backs “in check”. Not a moment too soon, perhaps.…

Christmas is, inevitably, a time of excess, especially when it comes to food and wine. My favourite treat was celebrating just before the Millennium with a case, selected by my wife, of 50 year-old wines from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, including a great La Tâche 42 - but occasions like this happen once in a lifetime. For the remainder of the time, we always try to have something special, and if there is a large gathering it’s best to focus on alternatives from the big names. This selection from Private Cellar is not only reasonably priced, but extraordinarily drinkable too. I was particularly struck with the Bourgogne Blanc from Domaine Matrot, one of my favourite Meursault producers. As for the reds, the Château Carignan would not be out of place…

● Labour’s villains Britain has more than 150 billionaires, controlling assets worth £525bn, said The Observer. Given that around 14 million Britons live in“relative poverty” – defined as scraping by on the basics – each one of these billionaires “could be seen as a failure of government policy”. Jeremy Corbyn’s warnings to “the stinking rich” could well “smell sweet to struggling workers”. Maybe, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian, but “summoning a few villains for the crowd to boo” will “do nothing for his business credentials”. Some of the Labour leader’s “baddies” – who include The Duke of Westminster, Ineos’ Jim Ratcliffe, hedge funder Crispin Odey and Sports Direct’s Mike Ashley – “may deserve a few verbal jabs”. But it’s impossible to tell if he is “proposing policies to tame…

The week’s best shares BP The Share Centre The oil giant is benefiting from the recovering oil price, cost-cutting, efficiencies and rising production. The acquisition of BHP Billiton’s shale assets adds diversity to the revenue stream. Yields 6.5%. Buy. 506.8p. Diageo Daily Mail The owner of alcohol brands Smirnoff, Captain Morgan and Johnnie Walker has been one of the best UK performers in the past three years. Jefferies expects it to make a minimum return of 15% in the next year. Buy. £30.97. DiscoverIE Group Investors Chronicle DiscoverIE engineers “highly technical” electronic components for growth markets including healthcare and renewable energy. Margins are improving as it grows organically and by acquisition. Buy. 472p. John Menzies The Times Shares in the aviation services firm have been in the doldrums. But Menzies…

document that any human has ever written. They can think for 60,000 years for every second that passes. If you have abrain like that, questions that were previously out of our reach – about the nature of the universe, how to build a fusion reactor, how to build ateleporter – are suddenly in reach.” Fantastical, you might think. But the same was once said of nuclear fission, Russell points out. The day after Lord Rutherford dismissed it as “moonshine” in 1933, another physicist, Leo Szilard, worked out how to do it. Twelve years later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were levelled by atom bombs. So, how long do we have before the age of superintelligent machines? Russell reckons they will arrive “in my kid’s lifetime” – but, as he admits, he may…

Mexican students at Sheffield University have been bemused by a poster campaign warning that wearing sombreros is offensive to Mexicans. “My culture is not your costume,” admonished the poster, issued by the student union at Halloween. But Mexicans in Sheffield have protested that they’re not offended by people dressing up in sombreros. In Mexico, “nobody wears those hats in everyday life”, said one student. “Even we wear them as a costume!” Buckingham Palace has delighted animal-rights campaigners by confirming that the Queen has resolved not to wear any new garments made from real fur. “We are raising a glass of gin and Dubonnet to the Queen’s decision,” said the activist group Peta.…

Staff at the People’s Vote campaign for a second referendum have been refusing to come to work in protest at the sacking of both its director and its communications chief by its chairman Roland Rudd. Staff passed a non-binding motion of no-confidence in Rudd’s leadership last month, and 40 have signed a letter raising concerns about an alleged campaign of intimidation towards staff, among other things. Reportedly, all this stems from a power struggle about strategy; Rudd wants to campaign openly for a Remain vote, while his opponents think they should be trying to win support for another referendum from Brexiters.…

Dresden, Germany “Nazi emergency”: Dresden city council has declared a “Nazi emergency” and issued a call to its citizens to protect minorities. “The city has a problem with Nazis and we need to do something about it,” said Max Aschenbach, a councillor from the satirical political party Die Partei, who proposed the motion. Dresden was the cradle of the far-right anti-Muslim group Pegida, back in 2014, and has been the site of a succession of far-right rallies and protests. In 2016, a far-right extremist launched a bomb attack on a city mosque. The declaration has little practical impact, but is aimed at spurring the regional and federal authorities to increase funding for political education and civic engagement. The motion wassupported bya range of left-wing and centrist parties, but was opposed…

1 Sugar Mountain (from Rock Follies) by Howard Schuman and Andy Mackay, performed by Julie Covington, Charlotte Cornwell and Rula Lenska 2 Hora Staccato by Grigoras Dinicu, performed by Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Bay 3 Three Wheels on My Wagon by Bob Hilliard and Burt Bacharach, performed by The New Christy Minstrels 4* Gloria in Excelsis (from Mass) by Leonard Bernstein, performed by the Norman Scribner Choir 5 Wuthering Heights, written and performed byKate Bush 6 Hold That Sucker Down (Builds Like a Skyscraper Mix) by Rollo & Rob D, performed by O.T. Quartet 7 Song for Ten (from Doctor Who) by Murray Gold, performed by Neil Hannon 8 Mr. Blue Sky by Jeff Lynne, performed by the Electric Light Orchestra Book: Asterix and the Roman Agent by René Goscinny…

The attempts to escape began almost immediately: two days after the Wall was erected, a 19-year-old East German border guard, Corporal Conrad Schumann, leapt over a 3ft-high wall of barbed wire to freedom. But so too did the deaths: at least 140 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall. The first, on 22 August, was Ida Siekmann, 58, who was killed jumping from the third storey of a house on Bernauer Strasse, where the house fronts constituted the border. The most notorious incident occurred on 17 August 1962, when two teenage East Berliners tried to run across no-man’s land near the crossing point nicknamed Checkpoint Charlie. One made it over, but 18-year old Peter Fechter was shot in the back. He bled to death at the foot of the…

Hell has come to paradise Bill McKibben The Guardian US California used to be the “world’s idea of paradise”, says Bill McKibben, but now swathes of it are becoming too dangerous to inhabit. Climate change has come to Eden with a vengeance. The past decade has seen such a deep, prolonged drought that more than 147 million trees have died. Those tree carcasses have become tinder for the massive wildfires that currently have hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their homes in Sonoma County’s wine country and in Los Angeles. This seems to be “the new, and impossible, normal”: the past three years have each seen vast conflagrations. Amid the bone-dry forests and brush, the state’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, is“at this point as much arsonist as electricity…

A potentially fatal brain disease spread by ticks has been identified in the UK for the first time, says The Daily Telegraph. Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBE), which is endemic in many European countries, usually causes flu-like symptoms, but can lead to brain damage and death. After a tourist fell ill having being bitten by a tick in the New Forest, Public Health England (PHE) launched an investigation and found a “handful” of infected parasites in Norfolk and on the Hampshire-Dorset border. They described the risk to the public as “very low”, but urged people to “take tick precautions”, such as avoiding long grass when walking, wearing long-sleeved shirts and tucking trousers into socks. Ticks are becoming more common in Britain, largely because of a rising deer population, and this has…

A series of earthquakes triggered by fracking shook houses and shocked residents in the Blackpool area over the August bank holiday, said Andy Bounds in the FT. The tremors – which registered 2.9 on the Richter scale – also “snapped the patience” of the local Tory MP. Mark Menzies, whose Fylde constituency is home to the UK’s only active fracking site, operated by Cuadrilla, was prompted finally to bow to local opinion and demand that fracking be banned. “Hydraulic fracturing is not suitable for the Fylde coast,” he wrote to Kwasi Kwarteng, the energy minister. Nine weeks later, the Government has granted his wish. Following the example of Scotland and Wales – which have already withdrawn support for the practice – it announced an indefinite “moratorium” on fracking this week,…

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever.” Margaret Atwood, quoted on Stylist “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” Mark Twain, quoted in The Times “Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.” Tacitus, quoted in The New York Times “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” Composer John Cage, quoted on ArtNews.com “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?” From George Eliot’s Middlemarch, quoted in The Times “In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.” Terry Pratchett, quoted in Country Living “I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop…

Why Farage won’t stand... To the I newspaper Surely the Brexit Party would normally offer Nigel Farage the chance to stand in their No. 1 target seat? Or am I being cynical in believing that should he win, it would be a personal disaster? If he were elected, he would have to resign his exceptionally well-paid job as along-standing Euro MP, and as a consequence forfeit the transition allowance due to him on the completion of Brexit – a small matter of almost s170,000. Ken Wrigley, Sheffield ...and won’t want to leave To The Independent Having laid down an ultimatum toBoris to either ditch his proposed Brexit deal or risk the Brexiteer vote being split, you have to ask: does Farage really want Brexit to succeed? If Labour wins the…

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout Viking 289pp £14.99 The Week Bookshop £11.99 “Lovers of literary treasure, rejoice,” said Joan Frank in The Washington Post. InOlive, Again, Elizabeth Strout reprises her best-known creation: the cranky, bossy, lonely antiheroine of her 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Olive Kitteridge. That book ended with Olive in her 70s, her husband, Henry, recently dead from a stroke. Here we follow her into her 80s, as she becomes close to a “miserable” ex-professor named Jack. The two novels deploy the same narrative structure, said Hannah Beckerman in The Observer: both are made up of 13 interconnected stories, all set in a fictional Maine town, with Olive often the lead character, but sometimes more of a background presence. Olive, Again is a “tour de force” that “cements Strout’s…

After all the “hullabaloo”, the Louvre’s Leonardo da Vinci retrospective “should be the visual equivalent of a 21-gun salute and a trumpet and trombone choir”, said Holland Cotter in The New York Times. Marking 500 years since the artist’s death, in 1519, this remarkable blockbuster exhibition has been ten years in the planning – and was almost derailed last year, when Italy’s populist coalition cancelled a loan deal that had been negotiated with the previous government. “Leonardo is Italian; he only died in France,” sniffed a junior arts minister. With the exchange only finally agreed with the formation of a newgovernment in September, the show now brings together around 160 works, including nine of Leonardo’s 15 to 20 surviving paintings, tracing his career from teenage apprentice to wizened polymath. Focusing…

Best books… Michael Ondaatje The author of The English Patient, who was last year named the best Booker Prize-winner in the award’s 50-year history, recommends six books about war. His novel Warlight, is out in paperback (Vintage £8.99) One of the 20th century’s great historical novels, The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, 1932 (Granta £9.99), follows three generations of an Austrian family caught up in military campaigns, but it is much more intimate than military, and captures three eras brilliantly. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, 1980 (Penguin Classics £7.99). Two men, emotionally damaged, return to an English town after the First World War. The central character is hired to restore a church mural, and as the plot unfolds and the ancient mural becomes visible, the men’s stories…

Programmes Novels That Shaped Our World Three-part series examining how the novel has sat at the heart of debates about society, and its role in spearheading change. Sat 9 Nov, BBC2 21:45 (60mins). Mafia Only Kills in Summer Italian coming-of-age black comedy following a ten-year-old boy in 1970s Palermo. It is written by the Italian satirist Pif, and is based on his award-winning film of the same name. Sun 10 Nov, C4 23:00 (65mins). The End of The F***ing World The surprise dark-comedy hit is back, with the teen duo James and Alyssa getting into more mischief. Tue 12 Nov, C4 01:55 (60mins). Climategate: Science of a Scandal Documentary about how, in 2009, climate change sceptics used emails hacked from a research unit to persuade the public that climate scientists…

Chilli, coconut, sweet potato and split pea soup Serves 6 (or 4 generously) 4 tbsp sunflower oil 2 red onions, finely chopped 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp chilli flakes, plus extra to garnish 600g sweet potatoes, peeled and diced 250g yellow split peas 1 x400ml tin of reduced-fat coconut milk 1.5 litres of vegetable stock, plus more if needed salt and pepper • Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large saucepan, add the onions and allow to soften over a low heat for 5 minutes. Add the ground coriander, cumin seeds and chilli flakes and fry for about 1 minute before adding the sweet potatoes and the split peas. • Pour over the coconut milk and stock and season with salt and pepper.…

Bosch GlassVAC Bosch’s hand-held vacuum cleaner for glass is great for windows and mirrors. You clean the glass using a microfibre cloth and the accompanying spray bottle, then remove the soapy water with the vacuum (£57; amazon.co.uk). Trixes keyboard cleaner putty We may prefer not to contemplate what’s lurking in the various cracks and crevices around the house (such as between the keys in computer keyboards), but this putty should dig it out (£3; amazon.co.uk). HanDingSM Angry Mom Microwave and Fridge Cleaners These gadgets are simple and cheap. Fill the fridge one with baking soda, and it will help eliminate smells; fill the microwave one with water, and the steam will dissolve the grease in the oven (£9; amazon.co.uk). Karcher FC3 Cordless Hard Floor Cleaner This modern mop makes it…

Kent seaside getaway The Rose in Deal is offering a complimentary 3-course meal for two (excluding drinks) with every stay (Sunday-Thursday only, excluding Monday). Visit therosedeal.com to book. Offer valid until 12 December. Two nights in Lapland Watch the aurora borealis in Hotel Riekonlinna’s Northern Lights lounge, from £649pp half-board, including Newcastle flights. 01483-494626, santaslapland.com. Depart 11 December. Get festive in Kraków Stay two nights at the 4-star riverside Galaxy Hotel, with lovely Christmas markets nearby, from £181pp b&b, including Bristol flights. 020-3474 3075, blueseaholidays.co. uk. Depart 27 November. Stunning Manhattan views Four nights at the 4-star Z NYC Hotel, situated along New York’s East River, start at £712pp room-only, including Glasgow flights. 020-8631 9577, teletextholidays.co.uk. Depart 4 December.…

Fiat Chrysler/Peugeot: bulking up Hot on the heels of its failure to merge with Renault, Fiat Chrysler is “in talks to combine” with another French automaker, said The New York Times. The proposed s40bn deal with Peugeot owner Groupe PSA will create the world’s fourth-largest carmaker, reflecting industry belief that size is crucial to surviving “tough global competition” and the “pressure to invest heavily in electric and autonomous vehicles”. The new combo is bound to “undergo tough regulatory scrutiny”, but analysts think “the French government may be reluctant to be seen blocking another auto deal”. This looks like another triumph for PSA’s Portuguese CEO, Carlos Tavares (pictured), who has “presided over the remarkable revival of the near-bankrupt owner of Peugeot and Citroën”, acquiring Germany’s Opel (which owns the UK’s…

The message from Aramco’s giant float Editorial The Economist The term “peak oil” was coined in 1956 by M. King Hubbert, “a geologist worried about the stuff running out”, says The Economist. “Today, the phrase is back for the opposite reason: the prospect of dwindling demand.” That is the challenging backdrop against which the Saudi oil giant Aramco is preparing its initial public offering. Worth well over $1trn, Aramco could, once listed, “become the world’s most valuable company”. Its “underlying pitch” is that as the industry shrinks and greener sources take over, it will be “the last oilman standing” because it extracts oil cheaply and cleanly. But the transition will not be easy. Shrinking this gargantuan industry could well mean “more, not less turbulence for energy markets and geopolitics”. The…

Bourgogne Chardonnay, Domaine Matrot 2015, 12.5% Don’t be fooled by this simple appellation of “Bourgogne” – this is a superb wine created from their younger vines in the village of Meursault, where the Matrot family make two of the greatest examples – Meursault Les Charmes and Les Perrières. It has a lovely slightly honeyed flavour with a beautiful citric back note. There are very few New World Chardonnays, no matter what the price, that match this simple white Burgundy in understated style and satisfaction – also helped by being from a great vintage. CASE PRICE: £215.40 - saving £18.60 Sagesse Rouge, Vin de Pays d’Oc 2018, 13% This is the personal blend of British wine merchant Mark Savage MW, who only produces several hundred cases annually with a slightly different…

As part of its “latest efforts to boost equality and close the gender pay gap”, Goldman Sachs is offering prospective parents on its staff up to $20,000 (£15,500) “to cover the cost of extracting eggs or purchasing donated eggs”, said Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian. Staff will also be offered $10,000 to fund the costs of adoption. The Wall Street bank’s new “pathways to parenthood” programme “comes nearly a year after it added sex-reassignment surgery and IVF fertility treatments to its employee benefit plan”. The bank has also launched a programme “to ship mothers’ breast milk home to their children” if they have to work overseas. Goldman is ahead of the curve, but several other firms have been ramping up parental benefits. Leading the field in Britain is investment group…