Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1263 i The Week

What happened Exit the Sussexes Prince Harry rejoined his wife in Canada this week after completing one of his last duties as a working royal. Buckingham Palace announced at the weekend that the Sussexes were stepping back entirely from royal life. Under an arrangement reached after five days of talks involving senior aides, the couple will, as of this spring, no longer formally represent the Queen or receive public funds for royal duties. They’ve agreed to repay the £2.4m of taxpayers’ money used to refurbish Frogmore Cottage, their Windsor home, and to pay commercial rent on the property, which they’ll continue using as a UK base while spending most of their time in North America. The Queen expressed her relief that a “constructive and supportive way forward” had been agreed,…

Francis Elive, a teacher in Cardiff, after all 30 pupils in his class achieved an A* in their maths GCSE, an exam they had taken six months early. At Fitzalan High School, Elive is known as the “maths whisperer”, because of the confidence he instils in his pupils, but he insists he has no special tricks. “All my pupils have worked very hard, and I am really proud of them,” he said. Opera, with news that two companies receive around £100 in public funding for every ticket they sell. The Arts Council’s funding of Opera North equated to £108 for each ticket it sold in 2017-18; English National Opera received the equivalent of £97 per ticket. By contrast, the National Theatre got just £22. Greggs, which has teamed up with…

Airports around the world began screening flights arriving from China this week, as the rapid spread of the coronavirus raised fears of a global epidemic. Seventeen people have died and at least 509 cases of the Sars-like virus have been confirmed in China since it was first identified in the eastern city of Wuhan on 31 December. The virus has now spread to both Shanghai and Beijing, and one or two cases have been confirmed in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and the US. Airports including Heathrow are monitoring flights from Wuhan, and this week the WHO was considering declaring an international emergency.…

Richmond, Virginia Gun rally: Some 22,000 gun rights activists – some of them dressed in full combat gear and carrying semi-automatic weapons – massed outside Virginia’s capital on Monday, to protest against Democrat plans to impose new gun controls in the state. In advance of the event, there were fears of violent clashes like those at the 2017 white supremacist rally in the Virginian town of Charlottesville, and President Trump was accused of stoking tensions by tweeting his support for the protesters. The Democrats want to “take away your 2nd Amendment rights”, hetweeted. “This is just the beginning. Don’t let ithappen.” Last week, Virginia’s governor declared a state ofemergency due to “credible” evidence that militias and far-right hate groups were planning to use the rally to foment “insurrection”. In the…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured the FA’s director of women’s football, Dame Sue Campbell 1 Dare to Dream by Paul Begaud, Vanessa Corish and Wayne Tester, performed by John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John 2* Music of My Heart by Diane Warren, performed by Gloria Estafan and NSYNC 3 Land of Hope and Glory by Edward Elgar (lyrics by A.C. Benson), performed by Benjamin Luxon and the BBC Symphony Orchestra 4 I Dreamed a Dream by Claude-Michel Schönberg, English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, performed by Susan Boyle 5 The Wind Beneath My Wings by Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley, performed by Bette Midler 6 Proud by Heather Small and Peter-John Vettese, performed by Heather Small 7 One Moment in Time by Albert Hammond and John Bettis,…

Why charity shops represent the future John Vidal The Guardian The world is drowning, says John Vidal – drowning in throwaway plastic tat. Every year, the average Briton throws out 400kg of waste – half the weight of a small car: and much of that consists of plastic. So what to do? Companies make a big deal of recycling. But recycling levels have stalled in the UK and, in truth, they’ll never keep up with the vast and escalating supply of new plastic products. No, in the end the only way to avoid ecological disaster “is to starve the beast of consumerism”. Buy less. Reuse more. And stop hankering for shiny new things we don’t need. Nor is this an unrealistic ambition. We have form in this regard: the UK…

Can you buy the Democratic presidential nomination? Two billionaires are doing their best to find out, said Brian Slodysko, Meg Kinnard and Michelle L. Price in the Associated Press. The Californian former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer has spent more than $100m of his own money on his campaign since July. But even that sum pales in comparison with the amount spent by his fellow candidate Michael Bloomberg, the media mogul and former New York mayor. In the two months since he formally entered the race, Bloomberg has spent $225m – more than three times as much as Donald Trump spent of his own funds in 2016. Bloomberg has flooded the key “Super Tuesday” primary states with TV and social media ads (he has also spent $10m on a60-second spot…

Does sex delay menopause? Having sex frequently appears to delay the onset of menopause, researchers have found. The team, at University College London, looked at data on nearly 3,000 women who were tracked for a decade from their mid-40s, and found that those who had reported having sex at least weekly were 28% less likely to have gone through the menopause bytheir mid-50s than those who had sex less than once a month. The researchers suspect that the physical effects of sex indicate to the body a possibility of pregnancy; if women stop having sex, ovulation ispointless and therefore ceases, to conserve energy. “There’s a ‘use itor lose it’ kind of thing going on,” said Megan Arnot, first author of the study, published in Royal Society Open Science journal. While…

Ian Hislop was surprised to find that Private Eye magazine had been included on a list of fake news sources compiled by a university in the US. It turned out to be because of a story it had run about a turkey pardoning Donald Trump at Thanksgiving. “Some of the other stuff we put in the magazine isn’t true either,” he explained to the college, in a phone call. ”Theresa May doesn’t run a school. She actually was the prime minister.” Photos of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston meeting at the Screen Actors Guild awards have sparked fevered speculation that the pair – who divorced 15 years ago – are getting back together. The couple were visibly delighted to run into each other, but they parted after a few moments,…

It’s hard to remember “a worse or more dangerous time for the BBC”, said Emily Bell in The Guardian. This week, the corporation’s director-general Tony Hall unexpectedly resigned. Whoever succeeds him will be fighting on multiple fronts at once. Commercially, the Beeb is facing unprecedented competition from global streaming giants: its share of video-on-demand viewing is 18%, compared to Netflix and Amazon’s 55%. Financially, it is being painfully squeezed. Internally, staff morale has been sapped by a long-running row over equal pay for women. And politically, it faces a hostile Conservative government which believes “there are no votes tobe lost ineroding the funding and the power ofthe BBC”. Hall’s seven-year tenure “will be remembered as one of relative stability”, said Alex Barker in the FT. He steadied the ship after…

Eight months ago, Saracens won the Champions Cup, the most prestigious competition in European rugby, for the third time in four seasons, said Gavin Mairs in The Daily Telegraph. Three weeks later, they won the Premiership title for the fourth time in five seasons. It was a period of success unrivalled by any English club before them – and it looked likely tocontinue for many more years. But atthe end of this season, in the biggest scandal English rugby has ever seen, Sarries will be relegated to the Championship, English rugby’s second tier. The club had already been fined £5.36m and docked 35 points in November, for exceeding the Premiership’s £7m cap on players’ salaries in each of the previous three seasons. But having failed to bring their spending below…

Far-fetched HS2 costing To The Daily Telegraph The fundamental question over HS2 is this: if the original cost estimate had been £106bn, would the project have been approved? And the answer is no, because the calculated benefits would not have justified such a cost. But as with so many government enterprises, an unrealistically low-cost estimate is used initially. Thereafter, no one has the courage to cancel the project because, as the costs ramp up, this would be seen as wasting the money that has already been spent. It’s all a con – and we, as taxpayers, are paying the price. Terry Lloyd, Derby Plastic-free challenge To The Guardian Re John Vidal’s article (“The solution to the plastic waste crisis? It’s not recycling”). After his earlier article on plastic (“The plastic…

Agency by William Gibson Viking 416pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £16.99 “It was either a genius marketing stunt or a strangely appropriate meta-moment,” said Francesca Carington in The Daily Telegraph. Weeks ago, Dominic Cummings called on “weirdos from William Gibson novels” to work at No. 10. Now it transpires that the sci-fi author’s latest novel envisages a 2017 in which “Brexit never happened”. In Gibson’s alternate reality, freelance “app-whisperer” Verity Jane is hired by a shady firm to test an AI device. But, it emerges, this world is in fact a“stub”, produced by people in 2136 meddling with earlier realities and causing them to “branch off”. “Once you have got your head round the cyberjargon and the twin timelines, Agency is an enjoyable read,” said Allan Bryce in The Times.…

Bombshell The takedown of Fox News mogul Roger Ailes Dir: Jay Roach 1hr 49mins (15) Well, this is unexpected, said Kevin Maher in The Times. Jay Roach, the director of Austin Powers – “the man who gave us fembots, Felicity Shagwell and a sexually transgressive secret agent who purrs, ‘Do I make you horny, baby?’” – has now made what may become the definitive film about the #MeToo movement. Bombshell tells the story of the women who brought down Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) for sexual harassment in 2016. It’s a serious subject, but what Roach has created is “a timely satirical takedown” that finds black humour in its challenging subject matter, while never “losing sight of its devastating repercussions”. The script is sprinkled with “exquisitely written…

After decades of doubt, a gloomy self-portrait has been authenticated as a genuine work by Vincent van Gogh – and his only work to have been painted while he was suffering from psychosis. Self-Portrait (1889) has been in Norway’s national collection since 1910, but its authenticity had been questioned since 1970. In 2014, the painting was sent to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for study. After five years of research, experts have concluded that it was painted in August 1889 in the mental asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, when the artist was emerging from a severe crisis, says The Art Newspaper. Van Gogh depicts himself with a haggard, depressed expression. The depiction of his ear is vague, perhaps deliberately so; he had mutilated his left ear in late 1888. Within a…

Jazzer and Roy tell Tom about Kirsty’s engagement. He calls in to congratulate her and apologises for what he put her through in the past. At home, he promises to support Natasha more. Jazzer and Alistair try to talk Jim out of going to Jayston’s funeral, to no avail. After a misunderstanding involving Alistair, a snarling Gavin accuses Kirsty of having a “lover” and they argue bitterly. Ruth and David go to a wedding fair to promote Brookfield as a venue. Lillian gets unexpected support from Peggy for the renamed B at Ambridge, but is still nostalgic for old times. A potential client from the wedding fair comes to see Ruth at the farm: it’s Vince Casey’s daughter. Kirsty discusses wedding plans with her mum. Over tea, Jim and Shula…

Veganism has been the “mega-trend of the past few years”, says Katy Salter in The Daily Telegraph – and it “shows no signs of going anywhere just yet” (look out for tempeh, emerging as a rival to tofu). But alongside it, in 2020, there will be a far more concerted effort to make food more sustainable in other ways. As restaurants and brands are recognising, we are an “increasingly eco-conscious bunch”. This year, companies will “either be shouting about their eco credentials, or frantically trying toimprove them”. Carbon neutral beef and wild dining Restaurants will increasingly go in for “carboncalculating” – detailing the carbon footprints of their dishes. Offsetting will also be a growing trend: steak chain Gaucho says that by planting trees and investing in green energy, it will…

Huawei E5573 Available either on a contract from £10 per month, or as a stand-alone device with a pay-as-you-go SIM, this is a sleek, portable model for up to ten users with a 150Mbps download speed (£43; amazon.co.uk). TP-Link M7350 This model is best for those who want a 3G or 4G connection for one or two people, since its battery won’t hold out as long some others. It requires a SIM, and has a handy LCD display for telling you the signal strength and battery status (£65; johnlewis.com). Solis X Smartspot This all-in-one combined router and power bank is very easy to use. It delivers 4G LTE internet in 130 countries, and can connect to ten devices. You don’t need a SIM card, but data is £7 a month…

Weston-super-Mare stay Two nights at the charming Grand Atlantic Hotel, which overlooks the sea, cost from £89pp half-board, including four drinks vouchers. 01942-447539, bayhotels.co.uk. Arrive 21 February. Picturesque Corfu studio Stay seven nights at the peaceful Paleo Studios, in a garden-view apartment, from £360pp self-catering, including Birmingham flights. 020-8492 6868, olympicholidays.com. Depart 2 May. Four-star Cuban getaway Spend three nights at Hotel Telégrafo La Habana (b&b) and seven nights at Blau Varadero Hotel (all-inclusive) from £1,299pp, including flights. 020-7071 3636, lovecuba.com. Depart 11 May. Twelve days in Ecuador The adventure begins in Quito, travelling through the Andes (full-board) and the Galápagos Islands and ends in Guayaquil. From £1,649pp b&b, including Dublin flights. 020-8068 3176, exoticca.co.uk. Depart 17 May.…

Sirius/Anglo American: fertile argument “Here’s a puzzler for the Prime Minister to answer,” said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. If the Government’s justification for bailing out Flybe was “to protect the UK’s regions”, where is the help for Sirius Minerals? A request last year to keep the Yorkshire potash mine alive with a Treasury guarantee on a vital loan was rejected. “Now, having exhausted every other route”, Sirius has been forced into the arms of the giant multinational miner Anglo American, in what amounts to a fire sale. Shares in the outfit, which has already created 1,200 jobs and hoped to create 2,500 more, were trading at 45p three and ahalf years ago. Anglo’s bid values them at just 5.5p – but the alternative, as Sirius chairman Russell…

The benefits of breaking free from Brussels Matthew Lynn The Daily Telegraph “Non-alignment” isn’t the catchiest of phrases, but it’s set to dominate the business pages this year as Britain quits Europe, says Matthew Lynn. Two points are already clear. The EU wants us “to align completely and forever with its rules and regulations”; and the UK, as Chancellor Sajid Javid has argued, will refuse. “In the end, that may mean only a limited deal is possible” – with “some tariffs, quotas and border restrictions”. Not aligning with Europe will certainly create some losers: supply chains will be less efficient for highly-integrated industries like car manufacturing, and trade will be less “seamless”. But freedom from “EU diktats” will create winners, too – in technology and financial services, where innovators can…

Dunelm Group The Times The resilient homewares retailer has been “hugely revitalised” by a simplified product range and “first-class online offering”. Margins are improving and profits have recovered. There’s more to come. Buy. £11.09. Ferguson The Daily Telegraph Having exited non-core businesses to focus on the US, the plumbing supplies firm is finding opportunity for growth in a fragmented market. It has strong cash flows, rising margins and “very strong management”. Buy. £72.16. Games Workshop Group Investors Chronicle Another record performance at the miniature fantasy figures-maker, with profits up 40% as it continues to engage with its community. Royalties provide additional income – there’s a TV series based on its Warhammer tabletop game planned. Buy. £66.75. Harworth Group The Mail on Sunday This expanding regeneration specialist is bringing new homes…

Controversy of the week Trump on trial The trial of Donald Trump, which opened in the Senate on Tuesday, is the third presidential impeachment in US history – and the “most legitimate”, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. For the first time, a president faces removal from office not because he walked into a “legal trap” set by his opponents (as happened to his predecessors Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, in 1868 and 1998), but because he committed the “high crimes and misdemeanours” on the charge sheet. In Trump’s case, no legal “chicanery” is needed. No one denies that he made that “fateful” phone call to Volodymyr Zelensky in July last year – in which he pressured Ukraine’s president to dig dirt on his rival, Joe Biden, on pain of…

HS2, with a warning that the high-speed rail project could end up costing £106bn, raising fears among its supporters that the Government will cancel it. According to the Financial Times, the official Oakervee report gives lukewarm support to the 250mph railway, but has recommended a further review of phase two of the project – the stretch running north from Birmingham. Coca Cola, which enraged campaigners by refusing to ditch single-use plastic. The firm, which produces the equivalent of 200,000 plastic bottles a minute, says its customers like plastic bottles. But it will now aim to use more recycled plastic.…

Keir Starmer would beat Rebecca Long-Bailey by 63% to 37% if they were the two candidates left in the final round of the Labour leadership contest. In a first round poll taken before Jess Phillips dropped out of the race, Starmer scored 46%, Long-Bailey 32%, Phillips 11%, Lisa Nandy 7% and Emily Thornberry 3%. YouGov In a poll of 500 business owners, board directors and senior managers with a household income of more than £100,000 per year, 69% admitted to having “significant” problems in their personal relationships. Only 20% of the general population said they did. 71% of those experiencing personal problems said these had a serious impact on their productivity. YouGov/The Times…

James May on Clarkson James May might have made his name presenting Top Gear alongside Jeremy Clarkson, but the pair have little in common beyond a passion for cars, he told Simon Usborne in the FT. “I disagree with Jeremy about everything. He likes to make out that I’m really old-fashioned and living in the 1950s.” In fact, May says, it’s the other way round: Clarkson is the one with one foot in the past. “Jeremy is very reactionary and conservative in his views, and I think he’s slightly terrified about the decline of the class system. He likes country sports and, you know, tramping around in tweeds shooting at things.” For May, who has a passion for carpentry (“screwdrivers and chisels really excite me”), such pursuits are of limited…

During the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s recent state visit to Myanmar, a post appeared on the official Facebook account of the host country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, stating: “Mr Shithole, President of China, arrives at 4pm.” It went on to refer to Xi as “Mr Shithole” several further times. Facebook later apologised for the mishap, blaming “a technical issue” that had caused Xi’s name to be wrongly translated from Burmese to English. A West London couple have won a four-year legal battle to ban their neighbour from feeding their cat. Jackie (above) and John Hall were “upset and distressed” that their handsome Maine Coon, Ozzy, spent long periods away from their home, so they installed a GPS tracker on his collar to see where he ended up. The trail…

VATICAN CITY The “pilgrim” with a love of the limelight Deutsche Welle (Bonn) When Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, he promised to keep quiet and live as a “simple pilgrim”, says Christoph Strack. As plain Joseph Ratzinger, he pledged “unconditional obedience” to his successor, Pope Francis. How differently things have turned out. Aged 92, he recently appeared on German television dressed in full papal regalia. Determined not to be forgotten, he makes public statements every few weeks; “he might as well tweet”. Now, he has stunned Catholic leaders with an outspoken warning against slackening the Church’s commitment to celibacy for priests. In October, a Catholic synod for the Amazon region agreed that older married men should be eligible for ordination to address shortages of priests there. But Pope Francis…

More concepts and prototypes were on display than ever at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, said The Guardian. As usual, some seemed superfluous (voice-activated taps); others just silly (connected underwear). But among them were products that could improve our lives. The £300 Matrix Juno supercooler can chill a can of beer in two minutes and a bottle of wine in five. It works through a process known as thermoelectric cooling, in which electricity is used to absorb heat. And a range of devices are coming out to help people look after their teeth. Colgate’s latest brush, the Plaqless Pro, has a built-in sensor that scans your teeth to give you real-time information on how effectively you are brushing them, in terms of plaque removal. Meanwhile, for people…

On the face of it, Laurence Fox was an odd choice of panellist for the BBC’s Question Time, said Seun Matiluko in Metro. A scion of the Fox acting dynasty, he is best known for his role in the Morse spin-off Lewis. But consider an interview he gave last year, in which he described himself as “radicalised against woke” – and it all becomes clear. The BBC hoped for fireworks, and it got them. It was during a discussion about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle that Fox lit the fuse. Dismissing the suggestion that Markle had been the victim of racism, he said: “It’s so easy to just throw your charge of racism at everybody, and it’s really starting to get boring.” Britain, he said, is “the most tolerant, lovely…

It has long been suspected that Boris Johnson “isn’t the sort of man you could trust to organise a booze-up in a brewery”, said the Daily Record (Glasgow). “Now he has proved he can’t even bring us a bong in a bell tower.” Last week, the Prime Minister called on the public to “bung a bob” to pay for Big Ben to chime at 11pm next Friday – midnight Brussels time – when Britain formally leaves the EU. But it subsequently transpired that even if people succeeded in raising the £500,000 needed to bring the clock tower, which is being refurbished, back into service for the night, parliamentary rules might prevent the Government from accepting the donations. Forced to abandon the idea, Johnson announced plans to project a giant clock…

When Joe Root’s England captaincy eventually comes toan end, “he will look back fondly at this tour of South Africa”, said Mike Atherton in The Times. “It was here, he may reflect, that the architecture of a new side was conceived”, its building blocks “put in place”. In the second Test, itwas a maiden century from Dom Sibley, a 24-year-old batsman, that helped seal victory. And in England’s third Test, in Port Elizabeth, two 22-year-olds came to the fore: Ollie Pope was named man of the match for his own maiden century and his six catches, while Dom Bess, a swing bowler, took five wickets in the first innings. They helped the side to victory by an innings and 53 runs – England’s biggest overseas win in nine years. Pope…

To The Guardian There would bean argument in favour ofthe use of isolation rooms or cubicles for troublesome young people in school if there was any evidence that they worked. In fact, there appears to be no such evidence. The evidence that we do have is that teachers who use praised-based strategies to improve pupils’ behaviour in class experience far fewer disruptive incidents, and hence less need to bepunitive. Yes, it is important and indeed necessary for any disruptive pupil to face a consequence asa result of their behaviour, but evidence suggests that effective punishments tend to be mild and irksome in nature, such as being kept back at the end of lessons, short detentions at the end of the day, and having their parents informed of their misbehaviour. If…

Cirque du Soleil’s annual post-Christmas residency at the Royal Albert Hall is now seen as an almost traditional part of the festive calendar, said Clive Davis in The Times. Alas, in recent years the shows put on by the Canadian-based global juggernaut have proved flashy but disappointing – like one of those “elaborately” wrapped Christmas gifts that turns out to be “five pairs of socks and a bottle of deodorant”. But the good news for fans of lavishly expensive circus-based spectacle, said Neil Norman in The Stage, is that Cirque has put a run of underwhelming years firmly behind them. The new show, Luzia – loosely themed around Mexico – is “fresh and invigorating”, and full of heart as well as spectacle. The “corporate soullessness” that has plagued recent productions…

The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hašek, 1921 (Penguin £10.99). Any lover of Catch-22 should read this, which does to First World War soldiering what Joseph Heller did to the Second World War. Hašek was a private in the Austro-Hungarian army, and if this is based at all on his own service, he was the worst soldier in the history of armed conflict. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis, 1881 (Oxford University Press £22.99). This great Brazilian novelist was openly influenced by Tristram Shandy in this faux memoir by an aristocrat named Brás Cubas. Speaking from beyond the grave, he lovingly skewers the customs and powers-that-be of 19th century Brazil in roughly 160 short chapters. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, 1913 (Bantam Classics…

Programmes Keeler, Profumo, Ward and Me The reporter Tom Mangold tells the inside story of the Profumo affair; Mangold worked closely with Stephen Ward as he became the scapegoat for the scandal. Sun 26 Jan, BBC2 22:00 (60mins). The Windermere Children Drama set in 1945 and based on the true story of a group of children who’d survived the Holocaust and were taken to recuperate at a camp in the Lake District. Romola Garai and Iain Glen star. Mon 27 Jan, BBC2 21:00 (90mins). The Gene Revolution: Changing Human Nature New Storyville documentary exploring the far-reaching implications of the Crispr gene-editing technique. Mon 27 Jan, BBC4 21:00 (90mins). Farage: The Man Who Made Brexit Filmed over five months following the EU elections in May 2019, this portrait of Nigel Farage…

This is a variation of a traditional Persian dish which uses yoghurt to help tenderise the chicken, says Yasmin Fahr. It is great for getting dinner on the table quickly: you can marinate the chicken the night before, then pop it in the oven when you get home. But don’t stress if you can’t do it ahead of time – it still tastes delicious with only a 15-minute marinade. Serves 2 or 4 sharing ½ tsp saffron threads 1 tbsp warm water 2 tbsp low-fat Greek yoghurt or skyr juice of 2 lemons salt and freshly ground black pepper 675g skinless boneless chicken thighs, cut into 5cm chunks 2 medium-sized tomatoes, left whole or quartered 1 small red onion, halved and cut into 2.5cm slices 1 tbsp olive oil 1-2…

● Charge your mobile phone in a room other than your bedroom to avoid getting sucked into the device before you’re even out of bed. ● People often open apps without thinking because they are the first things they see on unlocking their phone, so move most apps out of easy reach. Tools like maps, calendar and camera can stay, but put the rest into folders off your first page. ● Then get into the habit of typing the name of the app you want in your search bar to open it. The extra effort will make you pause just enough to consider if you really need to. ● Notification bubbles have been designed to hook your attention. Turn your phone’s screen to greyscale to counteract this. ● As much…

Torel 1884 Porto, Portugal Occupying a 19th century palace in the heart of Porto, this recently opened hotel is as “enchanting” as the city around it – the perfect place “to fulfil that ‘must-have-romantic-weekend-somewhere-divine’ feeling” one occasionally gets, says Tatler. Inspired partly by the history of the Portuguese empire, interiors are elegant “with a hint of decadence” – “a candlelit ambience behind plush drawn curtains”. The 12 high-ceilinged rooms and apartments have vast arched windows, four-poster beds and “huge” free-standing baths (the Asia suite has a library of 3,000 books too). And the bistro is “convivial”, with a “sensational” list of local wines. Doubles from £110; torel1884.com…

Tony Garnett 1936-2020 Tony Garnett, who has died aged 83, was one of Britain’s most successful and important film and television producers. He made his name in the 1960s collaborating with Ken Loach on a number of groundbreaking social realist dramas – from Cathy Come Home (1966) to Kes (1969). But whereas Loach has since remained focused on issues of poverty and social justice, Garnett ranged further, said Michael Hogan in The Daily Telegraph. As the co-founder of World Productions, he was responsible for the touching gay coming of age film Beautiful Thing (1996), as well as a host of influential TV shows, from Jed Mercurio’s first series, the hard-hitting hospital drama Cardiac Arrest, to Between the Lines, about corrupt cops, which was a forerunner for Mercurio’s Line ofDuty (also…

Global markets staged a broad recovery as concerns eased over the economic impact of the coronavirus in China. Asian markets rebounded and, in Europe, Germany’s trade-sensitive Dax index hit an all-time high. The 50th meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos got under way, with climate change and sustainability the meeting’s main themes. The increasingly fraught relationship between Britain and America over tech issues stepped up a notch when the Chancellor, Sajid Javid, said the UK would not back down on introducing a new tax on large US tech firms. Washington said it would consider retaliatory levies on UK carmakers if the measure goes ahead. The price of palladium, which has surged 80% in a year to hit a record high above $2,500/oz (making it more valuable than gold),…

● Amazon in India Western investors have been eyeing up India’s consumer sector for years. Can the might of Amazon finally open the door? The tech giant’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, certainly thinks so. “I predict the 21st century is going to be the Indian century,” he said this week at an event in New Delhi, pledging to spend $2bn on digitising small and medium-sized businesses in the country so that more of them can do business online. The online commerce market in India is worth about $39bn and growing, said Hannah Ellis-Petersen in The Guardian. But India is still “largely reliant on its 12 million independent neighbourhood shops”, which together account for “almost 90% of the country’s retail sales”. No wonder Bezos’s visit was not universally welcomed. Shopkeepers staged protests…

Fred and Peter Done Nice work if you can get it. The billionaire brothers Fred and Peter Done not only own the high-street bookmaker Betfred, but are also making millions from a business that treats public-sector staff for health problems – such as gambling addiction, said Rob Davies in The Guardian. Their new cash cow, Health Assured, has dozens of contracts with NHS trusts. The Dones – who grew up “in the slums of Salford” and opened their first bookies in 1967, funded by a win on England’s 1966 World Cup victory – have pocketed £5.2m in dividends from Health Assured. MPs described it as “an awful conflict of interest”. NHS mental-health chief Claire Murdoch condemned it as “hypocrisy and tokenism”. The duo might well be quids-in on this caper,…

AO World The Times The white goods internet retailer is diversifying and revenues are rising in the UK. But it’s still loss-making. Profitability does seem attainable, but it’s at least two years away and risks are high. Avoid. 86p. Croda International The Times A very strong performance in the chemicals group’s life sciences unit has offset the impact of trade wars and new legislation in China. Strong across all three of its divisions, but markets will be tough for at least a year. Hold. £50.60. Greggs The Sunday Times The baker enjoyed a record 2019, with coffee, breakfasts, healthier products and “old-school bakery” goodies boosting sales. But headwinds include the rise in the national living wage and increased pork costs. Hold. £24.24. Joules Group Shares After poor Christmas sales, the…

Marks & Spencer is selling sliced, peeled potatoes in plastic packets – to cater to the growing number of customers who, it says, like to cook from “semi-scratch”. A non-recyclable bag containing 700g of peeled spuds costs £2, whereas a kilo of regular potatoes costs £1.20. The slices are treated with an antioxidant to stop them turning brown. Cocaine dealers on the dark web are targeting socially aware drug users by marketing their cocaine as “ethically sourced” and “conflict-free”. While it is “impossible” to know if the claims are accurate, says Antony Loewenstein, the author of Pills, Powder, and Smoke, users (who are increasingly middle-aged and middle-class) are seeking out such products.…

Jess Phillips quit the contest to become Labour leader this week, having failed to secure the backing of any trade unions. The candidates each need two unions to endorse them in order to be able to participate in the final ballot, which opens on 21 February. As of Wednesday, Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy were the only two candidates to have qualified for the ballot. Starmer had secured the backing of Unison and Usdaw, while Nandy had that of GMB and the NUM, as well as the Labour Party affiliate Chinese for Labour.…

Paris Strikes ease: The public transport network in Paris was returning to normal this week, after the city’s main rail union, the Unsa-RATP, voted to return to work on Monday. France has endured six weeks of transport chaos, since members of several unions walked out in December over President Macron’s controversial pension reforms, with the worst disruptions in the Paris region. France’s state-owned railway, the SNCF, said the proportion of its staff now out on strike was less than 5%, and that 85% of lines were running normally. But while the strikes appeared to be running out of steam in the face of a partial climbdown by the government, left-wing hardliners in the CGT union remained fully opposed to any reforms. On Tuesday, CGT energy workers cut power to parts…

“Perhaps it was bound to happen to us eventually. The other evening, my wife and I watched Martin Scorsese’s film The Irishman. Right from the start, we found ourselves straining to make out the dialogue. After five minutes, we gave up and switched on the subtitles. Much of the dialogue was strangely indistinct, as if the cast had arrived on set after a painful encounter with a dentist. ‘Whur hur a hur hur,’ one gangster would sternly say to another. ‘Hur whur a whur HAR!” the other would indignantly reply. If I ever meet Mr Scorsese, I’ll make a polite suggestion about his mumbling actors. ‘Mur bur a hur mur?’ I’ll ask. “Hur mur bur awhur mur?’ I’m sure he’ll understand.” Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph…

Firefighters will try to contain a fire before it becomes too big to control, using both “wet” (water and fire retardant) and “dry” techniques: forming control lines (fire breaks) by stripping out vegetation, so the fire burns itself out. If that fails, firefighters move to the “extended attack”, throwing resources at it: everything from large water tankers to aircraft, which drop water mixed with fire retardant. Again, they establish control lines (natural, like a river, or manmade, by clearing brush with bulldozers) and sometimes “backburn” land inside it to stop the fire advancing. They tend to attack the flanks to narrow the fire to a small front, usually from the relative safety of burned areas. Another technique is preventative: managing the amount of fuel a fire can consume by reducing…

A drug which helps the body to flush out cholesterol could soon become available on the NHS, reports The Times. Inclisiran, which is manufactured by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, switches off a gene that produces aprotein linked to high levels of low-density lipoprotein –or “bad” – cholesterol. In previous studies, injections of inclisiran have been found to halve cholesterol levels within afortnight. Now, in conjunction with Novartis, the NHS is planning to conduct a large trial that will test the drug’s effectiveness both as an “add-on” to statins (which also lower cholesterol) and as a replacement for them. The Department of Health thinks that if inclisiran were given to 300,000 people a year, it could prevent 30,000 deaths over a decade.…

To a Yorkshireman like me, the idea of relocating the House of Lords to the “ancient and beautiful city of York” has “instant romantic appeal”, said William Hague inThe Daily Telegraph. Such a move – mooted last weekend bythe Tory chairman James Cleverly – evokes images of barons and baronesses “strolling around the famous walls” and “finding solace in the incomparable Minster”. I know there are many practical disadvantages in splitting the two Houses of Parliament. But one advantage would be in providing a place for the 795 sitting members of the Lords to go to after 2025, when the Palace of Westminster begins its long-overdue £4bn refurbishment. It would also be powerful symbolically, showing the PM to be “the most serious advocate of government by the North, in the…

“Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” Civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, quoted in Metro “Life is not a battle between good and bad, but between bad and worse.” Joseph Brodsky, quoted on The Browser “Who knew that the greatest mass thrill that the internet would provide would not in the end be sex or celebrity, but telling people off?” David Baddiel in The Sunday Times “You can observe a lot by just watching.” Baseball player Yogi Berra, quoted on NextDraft.com “Science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” Isaac Asimov, quoted in The Topeka Capital-Journal “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” Robert Frost, quoted in Forbes “We…

In Scotland, heading the ball was once thought to be “close to an art form”, said Aidan Smith in The Scotsman. Between 1973 and 1981, the national team qualified for three successive World Cups through a headed goal. But now, Scotland is set to become the first European country to ban children under 12 from heading the ball. It’s hard to argue with the proposals when the dementia risk is so high: “research reveals that professional footballers are three and a half times more likely to die from a neurodegenerative disease”. Little surprise, then, that England is under pressure to follow suit. Given everything we now know, it would be irresponsible not to “try and minimise the potential dangers” – even if we’re still “a long way from football without…

This charming, funny –and at times sublimely silly –“treat” of a show from Told by an Idiot (an “anarchically skittish” theatre company that has been pleasing audiences for 25 years) is based on a true story, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Or at any rate, it is based on a biographical fragment. In 1910, the then unknown Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel set sail together to New York from their native England as part of Fred Karno’s famous music hall troupe. Very little is known about the real-life relationship between this pair of comedic geniuses. But from this premise, director Paul Hunter and an exceptional cast of four have conjured “blissful entertainment that pays dual homage to the heyday of the music hall and the dawn of the…

Anna Freeman Bentley at Frestonian Gallery The places we live in say a lot about us: an unmade bed in an otherwise pristine room tells its own story, while the carefully selected furniture in achaotic artist’s studio betrays another entirely. Anna Freeman Bentley (b.1982) has produced a series of paintings focusing on precisely such incongruities, capturing deserted interiors full of idiosyncratic details that hint at the character of their absent inhabitants. Against a backdrop of garish colour, Freeman Bentley captures scenes including a palatial living room divided up by unharmonious conjunctions of paintings and modernist furniture; a lunch buffet, the contents of its dishes rendered in serpentine squiggles of colour; and a dining room scene, in which an excessively polished table abuts both avast abstract painting and a Venetian blind,…

Has Volvo “slipped out of its safe and comfortable slippers and built itself an old-school muscle car”? That’s the impressions you get from the Polestar 1, except for the fact it’s a plug-in hybrid, said Andrew English in The Daily Telegraph. This is the first car from Volvo’s new electric car brand, and it’s “certainly a different kind of Swedish car”, with tonnes of power – almost too much. Next year’s fully-electric Polestar 2 will be almost as fast and much cheaper; but this model feels as if it could become a “collectors’ item”, marking the transition to a new type of supercar. The Polestar 1 doesn’t rewrite the rulebook for high-performance GT cars, said What Car? It “obliterates it”. Despite the fact it has “more batteries than a branch…

Just off the Cotswold Way near Bath, The Oak House feels much more rural than it is. It’s kitted out with largely recycled finds and perches beautifully on stilts (sleeps two, from £128 per night; canopyandstars.co.uk). The architecture-award-winning The Black Shed, set on a working farm on the Isle of Skye, has spectacular sweeping views over Loch Dunvegan (sleeps two, from £700 a week; cabinly.co.uk). Built by the farmer on whose fields it sits, the cedar-clad Secret Exmoor Cabin in Devon has a modern Scandi feel to it (sleeps four, from £125; kiphideaways.com). Inspired by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Falling Water at Ponden Mill in West Yorkshire sits dramatically above a waterwall and has fine views (sleeps two, from £120; canopyandstars.co.uk). At beautiful Gwalia Farm in mid-Wales there is…

A culinary tour of Laos From the gold-roofed temples of Luang Prabang to the waterfalls of the Bolaven Plateau, Laos has many treasures – but none is greater than its cuisine. On one of Inside Asia’s gastronomic tours, guests visit some of its finest restaurants and participate in cooking classes, says Claire Boobbyer in The Sunday Telegraph. First stop is Doi Ka Noi, in the capital Vientiane, where you’ll immediately notice the difference between the cuisine here and that in neighbouring Thailand. Dishes here are spicier, with far more aromatic herbs and more bitter, earthy and smoky flavours. Also included is a day at the Tamarind Cooking School, a coffee roasting class, and a chance to try a soup made with weaver ants and their eggs in the town of…

Derek Fowlds 1937-2020 In 1969, Derek Fowlds, a classically trained actor, played Hamlet on stage in Exeter. His next major gig was rather different, said The Daily Telegraph. For the next four years, he was the human foil to an irrepressible fox puppet with a “Boom! Boom!” catchphrase and a voice like Terry-Thomas. Playing Mr Derek on The Basil Brush Show turned Fowlds into a household name – and damaged his hopes of being a leading classical actor, he felt. Nevertheless, he went on to star in two more hit TV series: he was the put-upon civil servant Bernard Woolley in Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, and for 17 years he played the local police sergeant turned publican Oscar Blaketon, in the ITV Sunday evening drama Heartbeat. Derek Fowlds…

Cloud computing is “enormously energy intensive”, said Philip Aldrick in The Times. But that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from attempting to reach “the most ambitious environmental target set by a corporate giant yet”. The US software group has pledged to be “carbon negative” by 2030 – overshadowing Amazon’s 2040 commitment – and aims to have offset all the emissions made since its 1975 foundation by 2050. The company, co-founded by Bill Gates and run by Satya Nadella, will invest $1bn in an innovation fund to develop new ways of capturing and storing carbon, because “the technology that we need to solve this problem does not exist today”.…

After several years in the doldrums, things seem to be looking up for hedge funds, said Laurence Fletcher in the FT. “A strong tailwind in stocks and bonds” saw the sector chalk up “its biggest annual gains in more than a decade” in 2019, with the industry “bagging” a total of $178bn according to LCH Investments – a fund of hedge funds run by the Edmond de Rothschild group, which tracks the dollar gains made by managers. It was, said LCH chairman Rick Sopher, “a significant improvement after several years of muted returns”. In 2018, the industry lost $41bn in aggregate for investors, although the top 20 managers still made gains. So who’s at the top of the pile? “Despite a lacklustre year”, Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates retained its top…