Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1303 i The Week

What happened The row over school meals Boris Johnson defended his decision not to provide free meals to England’s poorest children during the school holidays, but came under mounting pressure to reverse it. Earlier this year, the Government bowed to calls for such a scheme from the Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford, agreeing to provide £15-a-week meal vouchers to children over the summer. But it rejected Rashford’s latest campaign to extend vouchers over half term and the Christmas holidays, saying it had already provided extra funding to local councils and that there were better ways of helping families. The PM instructed Tory MPs last week to vote down a Labour motion to extend the voucher scheme until Easter 2021. Subsequently, hundreds of businesses, charities and restaurants tweeted their support for…

Guinness has created a nonalcoholic version of the famous stout, to capitalise on the growing market for low- and no-alcohol alternatives to popular tipples. The cold-filtered Guinness 0.0 went on sale this week in off-licences in 4x440ml can packs, and is due to be rolled out on draught in pubs in 2021. A Japanese start-up has developed a “smart” face mask that allows people to converse from ten metres away, in a variety of languages. Fitted with a microphone, the C-Face covering – which is designed to be worn over a normal mask – both amplifies speech, and translates it from Japanese into eight languages using a Bluetooth app. It is due to go on sale next year for the equivalent of £29.…

Four members of a Kurdish-Iranian family drowned in the Channel on Tuesday when the boat in which they were travelling sank off the coast of France. The BBC identified them as Rasoul Iran-Nejad, 35, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, Anita, nine, and Armin, six. Their baby, 15-month-old Artin, was still missing. The family are believed to have left their home in western Iran in August, and paid traffickers more than £20,000 to get them to Britain. This week, Boris Johnson promised to crack down on the “ruthless criminal gangs who prey on vulnerable people”, while refugee charities called on the Government to allow people to claim asylum from outside the UK.…

Edinburgh New system: Nicola Sturgeon unveiled a new five-tier lockdown system to combat the spread of Covid-19 in Scotland last Friday. The First Minister said the new levels, in force from 2 November, would range from 0 (“nearly normal”) up to 4 (“lockdown”). Level 4 will involve restrictions similar to those imposed across the UK in late March, although schools will remain open. Under Levels 2 and 3, restrictions will be similar to those now in place in Scotland. Under Level 1, a rule of six will be imposed; at Level 0, up to eight people from three households will be able to meet indoors. The new strategy was designed to avoid imposing a “one-size-fits-all approach” on areas with varying infection rates. In the week to 23 October, South Lanarkshire…

The reality of county lines Headie One is a rapper on the up, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. The 26-year-old drill artist – real name Irving Adjei – has performed with Stormzy, and been lauded for his unflinching reflections on inner-city life. He’s well placed to comment. Adjei, whose mother died when he was three, grew up on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham. His childhood was happy and carefree: there was a strong community on the estate; and until he went to secondary school, he rarely left it. But in his teens, he joined a gang – and became involved in county-lines trafficking. The money was a factor, but it was also a way of getting away, and “staying safe”. Was it exciting? “It’s boring. You do get…

A Chinese man was presented with a 19,800 yuan (£2,291) bill after a woman brought 23 relatives along to their first date. The 29-year-old had arranged to meet the woman for dinner, but looked on uncomfortably as her family joined them, tucking into food and alcohol. “I was testing whether the man who might potentially be my boyfriend would be generous enough to pay for all 25 people,” she said afterwards. Alas for her, it didn’t work: the man fled, leaving her to foot the bill. A drive-in cinema event in Chester was nearly cancelled, because people would have had to cross the border into Wales to use the loo. The Welsh border runs through Chester FC’s car park, the venue for Storyhouse Chester’s Moonlight Drive drive-in – and North…

VATICAN CITY Is Pope Francis tearing the Church apart? Die Welt (Berlin) Pope Francis is taking a big risk by airing progressive views on gay relationships, says Tobias Käufer. In a documentary aired at the Rome film festival last week, he signalled his support for same-sex civil unions (if not marriage), declaring that gay people “have a right to a family [as] they are children of God”. The Pope’s progressive thinking impresses liberals, but the pace of change has “overwhelmed” many more conservative Catholics. Rejection of homosexuality is “anchored in the Church’s DNA”, and a change of direction could be the last straw. How are cardinals, bishops and priests “supposed to suddenly approve of what they used to condemn”? The impact of Francis’s words was felt immediately in his home…

A lion’s roar is an impressive sound: it can be as loud as 114 decibels (equivalent to a chainsaw), and the creatures can recognise the roars of other individuals, even when they are several miles apart. Now a team of scientists has used sophisticated recording devices to pinpoint the variations that make this possible. In a study in Zimbabwe, five male lions were fitted with acoustic accelerometers, to record the full spectrum of the sounds they generated. Researchers from Oxford University analysed these recordings, then trained a pattern-recognition algorithm to “learn” the signature of each lion. In tests involving a series of roars, it was able to identify which lion had produced them with 91.5% accuracy; it achieved similar results from recordings taken later, in the bush. The hope is…

“Rishi Sunak drove his Rolls-Royce Treasury machine into the House of Commons last week and made an illegal U-turn in the chamber, in broad daylight, then carried on as if nothing had happened,” said John Rentoul in The Independent. The Chancellor came to announce that he was once again changing his already twice-amended Winter Economy Plan. The Job Support Scheme – set to replace the furlough scheme on 1 November – would be made more generous to ease the anxiety created by Covid restrictions. Billions of pounds in extra help would go to businesses in areas with Tier 2 lockdowns, along with more support for part-time and self-employed workers. His statement was clear, concise and full of “bipartisan reasonableness”: all in all, a “stunning performance”. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of…

“It pains me to say it, but Brexiters have a couple of good arguments,” said Henry Mance in the FT. The EU, they say, has “a propensity for baffling rules” – and a tendency to cave into the farming lobby. Both habits were on display last week, when a sizeable number of MEPs voted to ban the words “burger”, “sausage”, “steak” and so on being used for vegetarian products. They argued that such terms were confusing for consumers, an insult to the hard work of livestock farmers and a violation of Europe’s cultural traditions. In the event, they were decisively defeated. But it’s alarming that many lawmakers seemed quite serious about this absurd endeavour. “What next? Would we have to rename hot dogs? Are you telling me that the pigs…

It may be a “figment of our imagination” – a product of injuries, exhaustion and “artificial conditions” this season – but “something does not seem right with Manchester City”, said Luke Edwards in The Sunday Telegraph. By their lofty standards, their Premier League campaign has started abysmally: after five games, they have just two victories, and are 13th in the table. In their latest match, a 1-1 draw away to West Ham last Saturday, City were truly “abominable” in the first half, said Jonathan Liew in The Observer. In the second, they marginally improved, following the introduction of the “sugary” Phil Foden (who scored their equaliser). Even so, they kept missing chances and West Ham seemed hungrier at the death. Although injuries have blighted City recently – Sergio Agüero and…

In praise of cold baths To The Times I would like to add to Maria Lally’s article, “Hippocrates was right about the real benefits of wild swimming”. Thirty years ago, I was part of a trial to investigate Hippocrates’ saying that “cold bathing is beneficial for those accustomed to it”. For three months we sat in increasingly cold baths up to our necks for increasing periods of time. This acclimatisation protected us from hypothermia, and we experienced many beneficial effects, identified by Lally. There were two surprising discoveries. The first was how quickly the immune system sprang into action: my T-cell lymphocytes, which fight infection, increased by 15% after five minutes in my first cold bath. Secondly, over the course of the trial, the blood supply to the brain increased…

The 2,000-year-old cat “Archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old etching of a cat carved into a hillside some 250 miles southeast of Lima, Peru,” says Isis Davis-Marks in Smithsonian Magazine. The wide-eyed feline image measures about 120ft (36 metres) in length, and “appears to be sunning itself”. The drawing is thought to be one of the hallowed Nazca Lines – a network of around 800 such depictions etched deep into the Peruvian desert between about 500BC and AD500. Renowned for their “impressive scale and complexity”, the Nazca Lines have perplexed researchers since their discovery more than 90 years ago: since Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe first identified them in 1926, many theories about the reason for their existence have been posed, with experts arguing that they were intended to represent anything…

Lily is anxious about Elizabeth going on a date but Freddie says not to worry. Waiting for her date, Elizabeth bumps into Vince; they have a drink and discuss business seminars. Returning home, Elizabeth is in high spirits. Philip shows Kirsty some cottages in Wales he’s been looking at – he’s still keen to move but Kirsty’s not sure. Pip is exhausted and Rosie is acting up, but on the upside, it looks like they’ve secured rewilding funding. On a day out, Fallon ends up telling Harrison she doesn’t want children. He says he’ll be OK with it, but she urges him to give it real thought – he might feel differently later. As Elizabeth heads to the seminar, Lily frets and tries to persuade Freddie to follow her so…

Biscuits: a recent romance No other nation is as biscuit-mad as the British, says Lucy Knight in The Sunday Times: we buy more per capita than any other country. Yet as Lizzie Collingham shows in her entertaining new history The Biscuit (Bodley Head £18.99), this love affair is surprisingly new: biscuit-eating only became widespread in Britain after the Second World War. But biscuit making is very old. The word derives from the Latin biscotus meaning “twice-baked” – a technique used in the ancient world to preserve bread. It was Islamic confectioners who first made biscuits using sugar, and when the Arabs conquered parts of southern Europe in the early Middle Ages, they brought the treat with them. For centuries, however, sweet ones were the preserve of the gentry, while savoury…

The Daily Telegraph “This is not your usual Mini.” The John Cooper Works GP (or JCW GP) is the sportiest car in the range, and in its new guise, it’s “the fastest series production Mini ever built”. It looks “wild”, with its massive split roof spoiler, red air dam and huge carbon-fibre wheel arches. It doesn’t come cheap, and it’s almost too aggressive for the road, but it does deliver a “sopping great kick of adrenaline”. Auto Express Only 575 of the 3,000 models built will be sold to UK buyers, which may explain the price. Then again, so does its 2.0-litre turbocharged engine, which delivers 302bhp. For a Mini to have a top speed of 164mph is staggering. But while the grip is “unrelenting”, the ride is overly firm.…

Wiltshire’s Savernake Forest is Britain’s only privately owned forest. It is home to the 1,000-year-old Big Belly Oak (beside the A346), which has a girth of 33 feet, and the King of Limbs oak, which inspired Radiohead’s 2011 album of the same name. Set in one of Britain’s least inhabited areas, Buchan Woods in Dumfries has areas of ancient upland oak and open water, and is home to an impressive range of plant and animal species. Some of Britain’s largest holly trees and many mature pollarded oaks can be found in Suffolk’s Staverton Park and The Thicks. Find beautiful ancient trees on the Veteran Tree Trail (ancienttreeforum.co.uk) through Epping Forest, a vast ancient woodland covering 5,900 acres from Essex to Forest Gate in Greater London. Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire has…

HSBC/Barclays: dividend dilemma “Stephen and Stitt”, the two lion icons that guard HSBC’s Hong Kong regional HQ, “are back on duty after being vandalised during street protests earlier this year”, noted Andy Mukherjee on Bloomberg. Now that HSBC has got its lions back, can it roar again? Some of the pressures that sent the UK-domiciled bank’s shares to a “25-year low” in September certainly seem to be easing. “A lead for Joe Biden in the US elections means investors are paring expectations of an all-out financial cold war with China.” And there were some bright spots in this week’s Q3 figures, despite the tough environment. In fact, “provided it gets the regulator’s nod, HSBC said it would consider paying a conservative dividend for 2020”. All the big UK banks…

Britain is going to sea in a sieve Jeremy Warner The Sunday Telegraph On a recent call with business people, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove, compared Brexit to “moving house”, says Jeremy Warner. The analogy went down like a lead balloon. It’s all very well if you’re “trading up”, one attendee told me, but Britain’s current prospects look more like those of a “grotty little bungalow... on a flood plain”. It’s hard to disagree. We seem to be casting off our EU moorings and heading for the high seas amid “a perfect storm”. Brexit will make trade with our neighbours more difficult, but what opportunities does it offer? Reaching a “meaningful US trade deal” after a Biden victory may be more problematic than under Trump, who…

An 11-year-old boy who posted videos of himself singing his grandmother’s favourite songs during lockdown now has an album coming out. Cormac Thompson, from Lancashire, posted the videos on YouTube after the camera on his grandmother’s tablet broke, making face-to-face chats impossible. She watched them from her home in Northern Ireland – but his rendition of Danny Boy was also enjoyed by executives at Decca, who got in touch to offer him a record deal. A rare green puppy has been born in Italy – and has been named Pistachio. The dog was born in a litter of five on a farm in Sardinia. Pistachio’s brothers and sisters all came out with white fur, like their mother. Green fur is rare, but is believed to occur when a pale-coloured puppy…

Kazakhstan, which is cashing in on the release of the new Borat film, by using the character’s catchphrase – “very nice!” – in its latest tourism campaign. The first film was so full of offensive references to Kazakh culture that it was banned in the country. But this time the government has decided to join in the joke. Mattel, with news that sales of Barbie dolls have soared 29% in the past quarter, their largest increase for 20 years. It seems the toy company’s efforts to modernise Barbie – giving her different career paths, body shapes and skin tones – are paying off. Mattel also says that, in the pandemic, parents have been looking to traditional toys, to get their children off screens. Liams, who are doing a Kevin, and…

The antibody response to Covid-19 fades after a few months, scientists have found, dealing a blow to hopes that populations could eventually achieve herd immunity to the disease. For the research at Imperial College London, 365,000 randomly selected people in England were given finger prick tests to do at home. In June and early July, 6% of adults tested positive for virus antibodies, but in September, only 4.4% did – a fall of 26%. The biggest falls were in people aged over 75.…

Brussels Intensive care: Belgium’s former PM and current foreign minister, Sophie Wilmès, has been hospitalised with Covid-19 and remained in intensive care this week. Belgium, which was hit badly by the pandemic’s first wave (with a higher per capita death toll than Spain or the UK), now has the highest rate of infections in Europe’s second wave. Wilmès, 45, who was Belgium’s first female PM, serving for 11 months until early October, is one of several European politicians to have tested positive for coronavirus in recent days. Others include the Bulgarian PM Boyko Borissov, 61, and the Polish president Andrzej Duda, 48. Neither is reported to be dangerously ill. Warsaw Abortion anger: Poland has been gripped by anti-government and anti-Church protests since its constitutional court backed a draconian new law…

1* Mr. Blue Sky by Jeff Lynne, performed by Electric Light Orchestra 2 Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) by Baz Luhrmann, Mary Schmich, Nigel Swanston and Tim Cox, performed by Lee Perry and Quindon Tarver 3 Hurt Feelings, written and performed by Flight of the Conchords 4* The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) by Paul Simon, performed by Simon and Garfunkel 5 Barcelona by Freddie Mercury and Mike Moran, performed by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé 6 Sympathy For The Devil by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, performed by the Rolling Stones 7 Embrace Me, You Child, written and performed by Carly Simon 8 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, performed by Elton John Book: Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks Luxury: butter * Choice…

Some fish farms have taken their operations out of the ocean altogether. On the Isle of Gigha in Argyll, for instance, an artisanal operation farms halibut, using organic feed, extracting water from the sea for its tanks but returning zero waste, and entirely eliminating fish escapes and the spread of disease. Pumping the seawater through their “closed system” requires a considerable amount of energy, but this is provided by the community wind turbine. Gigha halibut, though, is not cheap: it will set you back £14.50 for two fillets. Bigger operations like the US company AquaBounty use indoor tanks to protect their salmon from disease and contaminants, eliminating the need for antibiotics and chemicals. Waste is filtered out and turned into fertiliser, with 95% of the water in the tanks reused…

Sex scandals no longer spell career suicide... Ben Jacobs New York Magazine Donald Trump likes to claim credit for many things, says Ben Jacobs, but there’s one achievement you don’t hear him boast about: he is probably responsible for “killing the sex scandal”. How else to explain the fate of North Carolina’s Cal Cunningham, who, in his current bid for a seat in the US Senate, is running as a wholesome family man, army reservist, and elder in his Presbyterian church? Two weeks ago, Cunningham’s campaign looked doomed when he had to face down the publication of “sexts” revealing his tryst with a married California woman. Of course, a few years ago a scandal like that would have proved catastrophic – but that was before Trump became president. Just weeks…

The number of people dying at home, from a variety of causes, has soared during the pandemic, reports The Guardian. According to Office for National Statistics figures, the number of deaths in private homes in England since the crisis began in late March is a third higher than the five-year average. But of these 25,472 excess deaths, only 2,358 have involved Covid-19. Deaths from heart attacks were 25.9% higher than normal; Alzheimer’s deaths were up 79.3%. During the same period, non-Covid deaths in hospitals have declined – which suggests that the increase has been driven by people not going to hospital when they normally would. What’s striking, however, is that the trend continued even after the first wave receded: in August and early September, when hospitals were functioning fairly normally,…

The scene is set for the endgame in the Brexit negotiations, said Reaction.life. We’ve reached the stage where people talk of “sherpas” going into “tunnels”, along with all the other abstruse terminology connected with the concluding episodes of lengthy EU negotiations. The UK staged a “walkout of sorts” from the talks after being rebuffed by European leaders at the recent EU summit, said Daniel Boffey in The Guardian, but the two sides resumed negotiations last week after Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, publicly acknowledged that UK flexibility in the talks would need to be reciprocated. Significant disagreements remain, but it seems we have at least got the “theatrics” out of the way. “The fate of the deal now lies squarely in the detail and the negotiating room.” The last…

“Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.” Minna Antrim, quoted in the Montreal Gazette “There are two kinds of light – the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.” James Thurber, quoted on ArtsJournal.com “If you don’t know why you like a thing, it is usually worth your while to attempt to find out.” Paul Bowles, quoted on The Browser “I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.” Kurt Vonnegut, quoted in the St George News “Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.” Sir Francis Bacon, quoted in The Times “You find out what your principles really are when there’s some cost to sticking up for them.” Sam Leith in The Spectator “Despotism…

A new British cycling star A few weeks ago, few people outside the cycling world had ever heard of Tao Geoghegan Hart, says William Fotheringham in The Guardian. Now, the 25-year-old Londoner is the sport’s latest star, having won an improbable victory in the Giro d’Italia, cycling’s second most important race. Geoghegan Hart began it as “just a team worker” for the Ineos squad, which was led by Welsh rider Geraint Thomas. However, when Thomas fell off his bike in stage three and broke his pelvis, Geoghegan Hart was handed the role of team leader – and capitalised in spectacular style, taking two mountain stages to pull level with the Australian Jai Hindley. He clinched victory in the closing time trial, an “unprecedented cliff-hanging finale” – taking the biggest win…

To The Guardian Marcus Rashford – a young, gifted, working-class footballer – is proving to be more of a statesman than those currently leading us (“Support grows for Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign”). The Government is missing the point. The free school meals policy was designed to help improve learning outcomes – hungry children tend not to learn as well as they should do. We are now faced with many in our society needing help to feed their families to stay well. The benefits system is unable to do so at the speed required, whereas schools know their communities and are ideally placed to work with other local leaders to get provisions to families who urgently need them. This is clearly the best option. The Government can afford to…

In Roadkill, David Hare’s new four-part “state of the nation” BBC drama, Hugh Laurie stars as Peter Laurence, a “self-made, shifty and popular” Conservative minister, said Ed Cumming in The Independent. He’s “a kind of Farage-Gove-Johnson mashup”, an LBC-style talk radio host with “a complicated love life”, who wins a libel case against a paper that accused him of financial impropriety, but then finds his troubles are only just beginning. The journalist he defeated is out for revenge; a woman in prison claims to be his lovechild; and the PM (Helen McCrory) is distinctly unimpressed by his ambition. Set in an “alternative universe”, without Brexit or the pandemic, the series struck me as “pleasingly retro”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian – if a little obvious in its message that…

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher, 1987 (Simon & Schuster £8.99). Fisher’s first foray into writing was this semi-autobiographical novel about an actress with a drug addiction who is trying to start again. Most of it is despatches from rehab – a mixture of self-aware soul-searching and hilarious accounts of the characters she meets in crisis. It’s warm but cynical, and funny as well as sad. The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy, 2017 (Fleet £8.99). This is one of the most extraordinary memoirs I’ve read, written by one of my favourite journalists. It is a raw account of ambition, grief, trauma, heartbreak and what it means to accept that you don’t always get everything you want. On Beauty by Zadie Smith, 2005 (Penguin £8.99). This novel is…

The Barn Theatre’s well-received adaptation of Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo’s 2003 novel about a soldier in the First World War (here played by a woman) comes to the West End, with a special performance on Armistice Day at 11.01am. 8-22 November, Garrick Theatre, London WC2 (garricktheatre. org). The Royal Court reopens with Living Newspaper. Each of the six weekly “editions” will be assembled by various writers, in pieces performed throughout the day around the building. 12 November-16 December, Royal Court, London SW1 (royalcourttheatre.com).…

’Nduja, olive and caper spaghetti 500g dried spaghetti 1 pot of pitted fresh olives of your choice 150g ’nduja sausage meat 3 garlic cloves 500g passata (strained tomatoes) balsamic vinegar glaze 1-2 tbsp of capers 1 small bunch of fresh basil Parmesan cheese olive oil salt and black pepper • Pour boiling water into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Season the water with salt, then drop in the spaghetti. Cook for 1 minute less than the packet says to. • Meanwhile, chop the olives. In a large frying pan over a high heat, drizzle a good glug of olive oil. Add the ’nduja to the pan and fry, smooshing with the back of your spoon to break it up, for 1-2 minutes. Crush the garlic cloves, add…

Philips Series 9000 Prestige Wet & Dry Electric Shaver If you want the absolute best of what’s out there, this Philips shaver is probably it – but it comes at a hefty price. It is super-stylish, and works like a charm for an exceptionally close shave (£330; boots.com). Philips OneBlade QP2520 Hybrid Trimmer Although it may look like a manual razor, this is actually an electric one that can trim beards as well. It is particularly good for sensitive skin, but note that you have to buy new £11 blades every four months (£40; boots.com). Braun Series 3 Wet & Dry electric shaver 3040s For a simple electric shaver that does the job and doesn’t break the bank, try this Braun model. It is waterproof, has quick-charging in five minutes,…

The rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus in the US, where cases hit an all-time high, and a brutal second wave in Europe prompted jitters on stock markets. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index hit its lowest level since May midweek, in anticipation of tougher new restrictions in France and Germany. The FTSE 100 fell to a six-month low. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 was also sharply down as pandemic and election uncertainties collided. The Turkish lira plunged to a record low, prompting concerns of a full-blown currency crisis in the country. The chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, Kate Bingham, outlined that the roll-out of the earliest Covid-19 vaccines from frontrunners AstraZeneca and Pfizer could start this side of Christmas. Separately, GSK and Sanofi announced that they will supply 200…

● Green symptoms The Covid-19 pandemic has “hastened the trend” towards ethical investment – particularly of the “sustainable” kind, said Alice Ross in the FT. A survey by RBC Global Asset Management has found that “more than a quarter” of professional investors are now placing more weight on “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) considerations – with “climate-aware” funds, in particular, growing in popularity. “Climate change has never been so prominent in the minds of [investment] product manufacturers,” according to Hortense Bioy of the funds research company Morningstar. And they’ve succeeded in pulling in the punters, attracting a “larger proportion of total flows into ESG funds this year than ever before”. In the nine months to the end of September, new money going into climate-aware funds totalled nearly s37bn, compared with…

Lee Kun-hee Samsung chairman Lee Kunhee, who has died aged 78, built the company into an electronics powerhouse that became “synonymous” with South Korea’s economic rise, said Al Jazeera. Smart-phones helped make him the country’s richest man, worth an estimated £16bn. Lee’s death prompted a jump in Samsung’s shares on “restructuring hopes”. Investors are betting South Korea’s punitive 50% inheritance taxes will force a stake sale – loosening the stranglehold of the scandal-ridden Lee family. The patriarch’s son, Lee Jae-yong, who has managed the conglomerate since his father was incapacitated by a heart attack in 2014, is currently awaiting trial on fraud and bribery charges. The older Lee’s death is likely to mean a big shake-up at the group – possibly not before time. Eric Baker The would-be “ticket king”…

Controversy of the week The North-South divide “If the first wave of coronavirus brought a tide of national unity, the second has seen a descent into local squabbles,” said Camilla Cavendish in the FT. Regions of Spain and Germany, once happy to comply with federal measures to slow the infection, are now resisting them. But nowhere in Europe has regional political conflict broken out as fiercely as in England. Last week, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, accused the Government of forcing a “brutal” settlement on his city when it refused to accompany tough Tier 3 curbs with what he deemed sufficient financial support (see page 22). Now even the Prime Minister’s northern allies are growing fractious, said Amy Walker in The Guardian. This week, the new Northern…

Trainspotters, with the closure of Ian Allan Book & Model Shop in Waterloo, a place of pilgrimage for transport enthusiasts for decades, and the last specialist transport shop in the country. Victoria Derbyshire, the BBC broadcaster, who was forced to backtrack after telling the Radio Times that “if the rule of six is still in place at Christmas, we’re breaking it... We need to see my elderly mum and my husband’s elderly dad. We just do.” She later apologised, and said she would be sticking to the law.…

Just 13% of people in England say they “fully understand” what they can and cannot do under the current coronavirus rules. And only 51% of people in England say they understand the “majority” of the rules, compared with 62% of people in Wales and 66% in Scotland. UCL/Daily Telegraph 72% of US voters say they are quite or very concerned about the prospect of post-election violence breaking out in the country. The worry is slightly higher (77%) among Trump supporters. JL Partners-Independent 32% of UK adults say they think the BBC licence fee should be maintained in its current form; 59% think it should be scrapped. ComRes/Daily Telegraph…

Washington DC Barrett confirmed: The US Senate has confirmed Judge Amy Coney Barrett (left) to the nation’s Supreme Court, handing a major victory to President Trump just days before the presidential election. Barrett was sworn in on Monday in a ceremony at the White House presided over by Trump, who described it as a “momentous day for America, for the United States constitution and for the fair and impartial rule of law”. The Senate had voted by 52-48 to confirm his nomination of Barrett, a devout Christian. Only one Republican, Susan Collins, voted against the confirmation. All Democrat senators voted to reject the appointment, which creates a 6-3 conservative majority on the panel. Barrett is the third Supreme Court justice Trump has appointed, following Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett…

“When it was coined five years ago, ‘virtue-signalling’ seemed a useful new term. A perfect way to describe hollow sanctimony and left-wing hypocrisy. Since then, it has been so debased that the time has come to retire it. It has mutated, grown sour and mean-spirited – to the point where it’s used to belittle more or less any expression of sympathy. Over the free school meals row, Tory MPs have decried ‘celebrity virtuesignalling’. If you’re going to church soon, don’t sit near any backbench MPs: the heckling could get wearing. ‘Honestly. This Jesus bloke sounds like a right virtue-signaller. If you ask me, He should stick to carpentry.’” Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph…

The scandal of our shoddy housing Helen Davies The Sunday Times For a nation “obsessed with houses” and house prices, we give precious little thought to “the quality of the property being built”, says Helen Davies. The Grenfell Tower fire exposed a “culture of shoddy construction and decades of regulatory failure”. And it’s shocking that, three years after that disaster, 700,000 people are still living in buildings wrapped in similar flammable materials. In total, millions are currently unable to sell or to get a new mortgage on their modern flats because they can’t prove that their walls meet new safety standards. Having invested hard-earned money in their property, these people are effectively trapped, facing the prospect of having to wait for years for safety documents allowing them to move, and…

Can cold dips prevent dementia? Cold-water swimmers have long professed its benefits, from improving the mood to boosting the immune system. Now they have another incentive to brave the icy water: it may also protect the brain from dementia. Scientists conducted tests on 40 people who made a practice of swimming daily in an unheated north London lido in winter, and found their blood had elevated levels of a brain protein called RBM3. Known as the “cold-shock” protein, because its production is triggered by a drop in core body temperature, RBM3 plays a crucial role in restoring connections in the brains of animals coming out of hibernation. Its impact on human brains has never been tested, but in tests on mice bred to develop Alzheimer’s, those with raised levels of…

Gyles Brandreth’s new anthology, The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes, includes a story about him inviting Sir John Gielgud to the Commons for the actor’s 90th birthday. “It’s a great honour that you should join us,” Brandreth told his guest. “Oh, I’m delighted to have been asked,” replied Gielgud. “All my real friends are dead.” Sacha Baron Cohen’s new Borat film (see page 33) features a now-notorious cameo by Rudy Giuliani. It shows the former New York mayor, 76, who is Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, being interviewed by the actress who plays Borat’s daughter. Afterwards, she invites him into her hotel bedroom for a drink. Giuliani pats her on the lower back, asks for her phone number, and then lies back on the bed with his hands down his trousers.…

If Joe Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States, one thing is certain, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer: Boris Johnson won’t be high on the list of foreign leaders invited to the White House. No. 10’s relationship with the White House is likely to be one of “the frostiest” for half a century. For one thing, Biden is a proud Irish-American who didn’t take kindly to Johnson’s threat to break international law and endanger the Good Friday Agreement, by dishonouring some clauses of the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU. But the real problem is more fundamental. To many Democrats, Johnson is “Britain’s Trump” – part of a reviled gang of “rule-breaking populists who have polarised their countries” and “trashed historic alliances”. The UK Government is certainly preparing…

Such is Lewis Hamilton’s dominance of Formula One that hardly a race weekend goes by without him “breaking or equalling some kind of record”, said Dan Ripley in the Daily Mail. The 35-year-old’s latest milestone, however, is “one of the biggest”: at the Portuguese Grand Prix last Sunday, he earned the 92nd victory of his career, taking him clear of Michael Schumacher as the “greatest race winner of them all”. It was a “typically dominant and ruthless display” that demonstrated why Hamilton is one of the sport’s greats, said Rebecca Clancy in The Times. In cold and wet conditions, his Mercedes initially “struggled for grip on its medium tyres”, and he slipped from pole position to third place. By lap 20, he’d regained his lead. In the closing laps, he…

Football Liverpool beat Sheffield United 2-1 to go into second place in the Premier League. Leaders Everton lost 2-0 to Southampton. Boxing New Yorker Teófimo López beat two-time Olympic gold medallist Vasyl Lomachenko of Ukraine to hold four lightweight belts in a closely fought bout at the MGM Grand Conference Centre in Las Vegas. Tennis Britain’s Dan Evans reached the semi-finals of the European Open in Antwerp, Belgium. He lost to Ugo Humbert, the eventual champion, after failing to convert four match points.…

Tales of lone child heroes offer film-makers raw emotions and fresh perspectives on the world. Here are five of the best: The 400 Blows Released in 1959, François Truffaut’s autobiographical first feature broke new ground with its spontaneous, naturalistic portrayal of childhood experience, becoming a model for directors ever since. Jean-Pierre Léaud plays the rebellious, thieving Parisian boy whose parents abandon him to a juvenile detention centre. Wadjda Waad Mohammed plays a spirited ten-year-old girl who is determined to buy a bicycle in conservative Riyadh, where girls generally don’t ride bikes. This exhilarating 2012 film was the first feature ever shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, by the country’s first female film director, Haifaa Al Mansour. Kes Directors such as Terence Davies, Bill Douglas and Lynne Ramsay have forged a modern…

It’s hard to imagine an environment more hostile than the icy wilderness north of the Arctic Circle, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Inhospitable even in their summer months, the northernmost regions of the United States, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia, as well as Greenland, are nonetheless home to dozens of indigenous populations who have “managed not just to survive but to thrive”, with access to only the most basic of resources. These “highly resilient and inventively adaptable” people are the subject of a new exhibition at the British Museum, which reaches back across 30,000 years to explore their history and culture, as well as the very real threat to their existence posed by climate change. Bringing together some 280 artefacts, from a “toddler’s all-in-one romper suit made of caribou-fawn fur”…

In the past, I never saw the appeal of wine boxes, says Fiona Beckett in The Guardian: conventional bottles seemed to offer better quality and choice. Recently, though, I’ve started to realise that BIB (bag-in-box) wine has some advantages. It has a lower carbon footprint than bottled wine, and it keeps fresh longer (typically, around 20 days). But the real “game-changer” has been the arrival of better-quality products. More Wine’s Beaujolais Rosé (£31.50 for three litres; morewine.co.uk), for instance, is “attractively fruity”, and fuller than a Provence rosé, so well-suited to autumn drinking. The best wine box I’ve tasted is BIB Wine Co’s TR Furmint 2019 (£38 for 2.25 litres; bibwine.co.uk): this Hungarian white has an “almost almondy” flavour and would go well with food – though, at the equivalent…

● Insomnia is a common symptom of burnout, which is on the rise thanks to the stresses of working from home. But one of the advantages of being at home is that you can take 30-minute naps to reset your energy levels – so don’t be afraid to do so. ● Learn to say no, and to articulate what you won’t have time for to your superiors. ● It’s easy to get into the habit of decompressing with a glass of wine at the end of the day. But alcohol affects sleep and is a depressant, so it is not a great de-stresser. Try going on a walk instead. ● Separate aspects of your everyday life into two columns: “protective factors” and “risk factors” for your mental health. Then see…

Rhonda Fleming 1923-2020 Rhonda Fleming, who has died aged 97, appeared in several black and white classics, including Hitchcock’s Spellbound in 1945, and the 1946 psychological horror The Spiral Staircase – but it was in the 1950s, when the movies embraced dazzling colour, that she became a star. Along with fellow redhead Maureen O’Hara, she became known as “the Queen of Technicolor” – but she didn’t welcome this. “Suddenly my green eyes were green green. My red hair was flaming red. My skin was porcelain white,” she said in 1991. “There was all this attention on how I looked, rather than the roles I was playing. I’d been painted into a corner by the studios, who never wanted more from me than my looking good and waltzing through a parade…

An “earth-shaking arthropod” is coming to market, said Lex in the Financial Times. In a “stunning expression of China’s economic vigour and Jack Ma’s business success”, Ant Group is readying itself to stage the world’s largest-ever initial public offering in Shanghai and Hong Kong next week. The $34bn-plus float, which eclipses the $29bn raised last year by the state-controlled Saudi oil giant Aramco, will value the Chinese payments firm (an affiliate of Ma’s e-commerce titan Alibaba) at around $313bn. The move marks an extraordinary double for Ma, a former English teacher, who first broke the record for the world’s biggest IPO when he floated Alibaba in 2014. Observers report “overwhelming” investor demand for the dual IPO, said Reuters: both the Shanghai and Hong Kong offerings are heavily oversubscribed. “Given the…

“Borrowers racing to buy a property before stamp duty savings end in March face stiff competition for mortgages,” says Faith Archer in The Times. Deals have been disappearing “faster than supplies of loo roll before lock-down”. According to Moneyfacts, fewer than half the deals on offer in March were still around in October – but there are still ways you can unlock the door: Build a bigger deposit The Government “may be puffing promises of 95% mortgages”, but right now there are few available from lenders. “If you can scrape together at least 15% of the property value, you’ll find lower rates and a wider choice.” Improve your credit score Check your records with the main credit-reference agencies well ahead of making your application and take steps to improve your…

The week’s best shares Caretech Holdings The Times This social care provider looks after more than 4,500 children and adults in 550 UK sites and runs a fostering service. Trading robustly, with plenty of scope for bolt-on deals. Set to pay a dividend. Buy. 470p. Netflix The Times The US streaming giant has more than 193 million subscribers in 190 countries, and is competing well with new entrants to the streaming field in new territories. Margins and cashflow are improving. Stepping up production. Buy. $489.05. Polymetal International The Times Record gold prices have boosted the Russian precious metals miner, with production levels beating forecasts. Uncertainty could see gold climb higher, and there’s a prospective 5.9% yield. Buy. £17.75. Relx The Times The pandemic has hammered Relx’s events arm. But company’s…