Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1319 i The Week

What happened Britain’s vaccine milestone The UK hit its target of vaccinating its 15 million most vulnerable citizens this week, in what Boris Johnson hailed as a “significant milestone” in the fight against Covid-19. Although it’s barely two months since the roll-out began, every Briton in the top four priority groups has now been offered their first jab, said the PM. And there are signs that the vaccine, and lockdown measures, are leading to sharp falls in case numbers and deaths: new research by Oxford University found that among the over-80s – a group that has had its first dose – deaths are dropping twice as quickly as among under-65s. Last week, the official estimate of the UK’s R number fell below 1 for the first time since July. The…

Paris New terminal scrapped: The French government has scrapped plans to build a fourth terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, just months before work on the vast project was due to begin. The terminal would have increased capacity at Charles de Gaulle – which in October overtook Heathrow as Europe’s busiest airport – by more than 50%. Designed to handle roughly the same number of passengers as Orly, Paris’s second airport, the terminal had been described as “an airport within an airport”. But last week the government cancelled the project. It said the pandemic (which has seen air travel collapse to a quarter of its previous levels) had rendered it obsolete, and cited the need to cut carbon emissions. “We will still need planes, but we have to…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured the activist Malala Yousafzai 1 Rang by Amir Khusro, performed by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Amjad Sabri 2 Shinwari Lawangeena, traditional, performed by Zarsanga 3 Never Say Never by Adam Messinger, Nasri, Kuk Harrell, Jaden Smith, Omarr Rambert & Justin Bieber, performed by Justin Bieber 4* Hum Dekhenge by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, performed by Iqbal Bano 5 All I Ask of You by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe, performed by Sarah Brightman and Steve Barton 6 Kaari Kaari from Pink by Tanveer Ghazi and Shantanu Moitra, performed by Qurat-ul-Ain Balouch 7 Love Always Comes as a Surprise, written and performed by Peter Asher 8 Bibi Sherina by Behroz Khan and Sardar Ali Takkar, performed by Sardar…

In August 2020, on a plane from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow, Navalny suddenly fell ill: he said later that every cell in his body went “berserk”. He told the flight attendant he was about to die; mobile phone footage showed him screaming in pain. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where, now in a coma, he was given drug overdose treatment that probably saved his life. The Russian authorities then allowed him to be airlifted to Berlin’s Charité hospital. After several weeks, he emerged from a coma, and spent three months recovering. Navalny then teamed up with Russian journalists and the UK-based cooperative Bellingcat to report on his own botched assassination. They identified a unit of the Russian security services, the FSB,…

ROMANIA A Christian ritual that is killing babies Adevarul (Bucharest) The accidental drowning of a six-week-old baby at a recent baptism ceremony has caused an outcry in Romania, says Mihai Copaceanu. Traditionalists in the Romanian Orthodox clergy insist on fully immersing the child three times in water. And earlier this month, a christening carried out by Archbishop Teodosie Petrescu in the city of Suceava went badly wrong. The baby’s lips turned blue; he later died in hospital. A tragedy like this was bound to happen: many Romanian priests approach baptisms “like firefighters”, splashing water with “incredible force”. It’s no surprise that Teodosie – who is being investigated for manslaughter – was involved. One of Romania’s most outspokenly conservative Church leaders, he’s no stranger to scandal (he has been acquitted of…

Should it be easier or harder to vote? That’s the question on which the future direction of American politics now hangs, said Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic (Washington). In a bid to tilt the playing field in their favour, the Republicans are trying to make voting more difficult. In the past year, GOP lawmakers have introduced some 165 proposals in 33 states restricting citizens’ access to the ballot box, supposedly in the name of protecting voting integrity. These bills curtail early and absentee voting, impose stricter voter identification requirements and add new hurdles to the voter registration process. The Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to push things the other way with a piece of federal legislation called H.R. 1, or the For the People Act, which, among other things, mandates unlimited…

Hundreds of hills in Britain could be turned into “batteries” for renewable energy, engineers have suggested. Like a typical hydropower plant, the system would involve using surplus electricity from the grid to pump water up the hill, then later releasing the water back down the hill, through generators, when energy is needed. But whereas traditional plants tend to have to be built on mountains, the proposed “high-intensity” ones use a mineral-rich fluid which is far denser than water, meaning they can generate the same amount of energy from much lower slopes. The company behind the plan, RheEnergise, says the scheme could work on 200-metre-high hills, with water stored in an underground tank larger than the size of an Olympic swimming pool. The plants should be quicker and cheaper to build…

Bill Michael acquired his fair share of enemies during his four years as the UK chair of KPMG, said Eliot Wilson in City AM. But the dramatic departure of the “abrasive” 52-year-old Australian from that role last week was entirely self-inflicted. It followed a virtual “town hall” meeting with hundreds of staff, in which he accused his employees of “moaning” about their circumstances during lockdown, and urged them to stop “playing the victim card”. He then dismissed the concept of unconscious bias – the idea that people harbour prejudices they are unaware of and need to be alerted to – as “complete and utter crap”. Even he realised he had gone too far, and before the meeting ended he had already apologised to attendees. He followed that up with an…

Two months ago, Liverpool seemed to be mounting a spirited defence of their Premier League title, said Ian Ladyman in the Daily Mail. On Christmas day, Jürgen Klopp’s side, four points clear at the top of the table, looked odds-on to retain it. Then came their disastrous slide. Of their last ten Premier League games, Liverpool have lost five, and won just two. Last month’s defeat to Burnley ended their remarkable 68-game unbeaten home run, and they’ve now lost three matches at Anfield in a row: that last happened in 1963. As a team they look desperately short of confidence – as was clear from their “shocking” disintegration against Leicester on Saturday, when they conceded three goals in a chaotic seven-minute period. Having already conceded that his side can’t win…

Football Manchester City extended their lead in the Premier League with a 3-0 win over Tottenham. Tennis Stefanos Tsitsipas beat Rafael Nadal in a five-set battle to reach the semi-finals of the Australian Open. Serena Williams made it through to the semi-finals with a straight-sets win over Simona Halep, 6-3, 6-3. She will face Naomi Osaka. Boxing Josh Warrington suffered the first defeat of his career at the hands of Mauricio Lara of Mexico. The English featherweight was knocked out in the ninth round.…

For the past decade or more, Canadian Tamara Lindeman, who records as The Weather Station, has been delivering “piercing introspections” on a series of “decreasingly folky” albums, said Jonathan Bernstein in Rolling Stone. Her new album, though, is something different. Combining themes of heartbreak and climate peril, Ignorance broadens her sonic palette with crisp orchestral backing and a “propulsive” rhythm section, and claims for her a place as “one of the most audaciously inventive auteurs” in the singer-songwriter tradition. It’s like hearing a “millennial Joni Mitchell fronting jazzy versions of LCD Soundsystem or The National, depending on the song”. The album is a five-star marvel, agreed Kitty Empire in The Observer: a “multi-layered, slowly unfolding record” on which “shimmering break-up songs double as a rallying cry for our ravaged planet”…

After two awards-laden series in the States, America’s first Muslim sitcom has arrived in the UK via Channel 4 – and it’s “like nothing else on television”, said Susannah Butter in the London Evening Standard. Stand-up comic Ramy Youssef (who created the series) plays an Egyptian-American medical-school dropout, who is living with his parents and sister in New Jersey while he goes through a quarter-life crisis. He wants to be a good Muslim, but also to party, to sleep around and to take drugs. The show offers a “frank” look at a community that is rarely given much attention in TV fiction, but it has broad appeal, and never feels “worthy”. The writing is “razor-sharp”, said Chris Bennion in The Daily Telegraph. It’s a confessional comedy-drama similar to Fleabag, but…

Best books… Andrew Martin The historical novelist chooses his five favourite crime books. His latest novel, Powder Smoke (Corsair £16.99) – the tenth in his Jim Stringer series about a railway man turned railway policeman – is out now Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith, 1967 (Virago £8.99). A strange but compelling psychological novel, in which one man repeatedly tries to murder another while both are having what seems a rather a nice holiday in Venice. It demonstrates all of Highsmith’s best qualities: atmosphere, languor, dreamlike force. The Complete Western Stories by Elmore Leonard, 2004 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £16.99). My novel Powder Smoke is a sort of western, albeit set in Yorkshire in 1925. I like western films and stories for their terse dialogue and suppressed emotion, and Leonard’s…

The Royal Shakespeare Company reinvents A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the 21st century with Dream, a live, interactive 50-minute-long production that aims to bring immersive theatre to a worldwide audience. Using motion-capture technology, actors’ movements will be mapped onto virtual avatars, as they lead the audience through a virtual enchanted forest, with layers of sound and music. Audience members have the option to participate in the performances as “fireflies”, or simply watch on a phone or computer. 12-20 March; £10 for an interactive ticket, or free to watch (dream.online).…

Serves 4 1 tbsp ras-el-hanout 4 tbsp light olive oil 900g pork shoulder, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 5cm pieces 2 red onions, peeled and cut into 8 wedges 1 large carrot, peeled and roughly sliced 2 celery sticks, roughly sliced 2 bay leaves 3 garlic cloves, finely sliced 2 tbsp tomato purée 300ml chicken stock 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar 2 tbsp red wine vinegar 2 tbsp honey 2 tbsp currants 2 tbsp capers, rinsed and drained sea salt and freshly ground black pepper • Preheat the oven to 160°C. Mix the ras-el-hanout with 2 tbsp of water and set aside. • Heat the oil in your wide shallow pot over a medium heat. Brown the pork for 4-5 minutes and once browned, set aside on a plate.…

Olympus RC II 8x21 If you just want an affordable pair of binoculars that you can slip into your pocket for walks, this compact Olympus pair is great. They focus well and the 8x magnification gives a good view (£50; argos.co.uk). Bushnell Forge 15x56 If you want to go for the top of the range, these weighty binoculars are very durable, waterproof and offer top visibility in any weather, thanks to coatings on the 56mm lenses (£700; uttings.co.uk). Celestron SkyMaster 25x100 For those wanting to stargaze without a telescope, these advanced binoculars with 100mm lenses will do the trick. A tripod will help keep them steady (£319; wexphotovideo.com). Nikon Prostaff 3S 10x42 A brilliant all-round pair that is great value, these have many features found in premium models. They’re light,…

President Biden pledged that his $1.9trn Covid relief plan, which is awaiting congressional approval, would create seven million jobs. “Now’s the time to go big,” he said. Ahead of next month’s Budget, pressure mounted on Rishi Sunak to do the same. The Institute for Public Policy Research urged the Chancellor to commit to a £190bn fiscal stimulus – equivalent to 8.6% of GDP in 2021-22 – to avoid a vicious cycle of bankruptcies, lay-offs and depressed demand (he has promised only £40bn). The pound hit a three-year high above $1.39. Japan’s Nikkei index hit a 30-year high on hopes of a rapid rebound from Covid. UK inflation took the first step in a likely march upward. Rising food prices lifted the Consumer Price Index from 0.6% to 0.7% in January,…

● Shining recovery The FTSE 100 soared and the pound broke above $1.39 against the dollar for the first time in almost three years this week “as Britain hit a milestone in its vaccination programme”, said The Daily Telegraph. Could this be a turning point for UK-related assets, which have “struggled” of late? Paul Dales of Capital Economics is a believer. He reckons markets globally will be “buoyed” by a combination of ultra-loose monetary policy and economic recovery, but that Britain in particular could shine. “The UK’s more favourable valuations and its greater exposure to the sectors likely to benefit most from the recovery” suggests equities “will rebound more rapidly than elsewhere”. Sterling is also tipped for a further boost. According to forex strategist Kit Juckes of SocGen, recovery means…

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala After a protracted tussle, Nigeria’s former finance minister has been elected as director-general of the World Trade Organisation – the first African, and the first woman, to lead the body, said The New York Times. The WTO has been in limbo for months because the Trump administration backed a rival candidate, South Korea’s Yoo Myung-hee, arguing that Okonjo-Iweala, 66, lacked “trade experience”. It took the arrival of Joe Biden to change that stance. “It’s been a long and tough road... [but now] the real work can begin,” said Okonjo-Iweala, who argues that “a strong WTO” is vital to the world’s recovery from the pandemic. She inherits a deeply troubled body. “At a time of growing global protectionism”, the WTO has appeared toothless, hampered by its “crippled” dispute-settlement system.…

The week’s best shares City Pub Group The Sunday Times The group, which owns 48 gastropubs, saw sales fall 57% in 2020, but has cut costs and streamlined ready for reopening. Set to benefit from a boom in domestic tourism, as some of its pubs have rooms. Buy. 119p. CureVac The Daily Telegraph This German biotech specialises in messenger RNA vaccines. Volatile, but a joint venture with GSK to develop and manufacture the next mutation-resistant generation of Covid-19 vaccines is promising. Buy. $114.33. Hargreaves Services Investors Chronicle Land deals with builders Bellway and Persimmon should boost profits significantly at this industrial services and property regeneration group. Diversified with no bank debt and a 6.9% forecast yield. Target price 350p. Buy. 296p. Prudential The Times Once the demerger of the US…

A.G. Barr The Daily Telegraph The Irn-Bru maker has maintained margins, despite hospitality closures. Thanks to powerful brands, efficiencies and a strong balance sheet, there’s potential for gains when demand recovers. Hold. 497p. Carnival ShareCast Analysts at Berenberg have lowered their rating for the cruise ship operator from “hold”, citing significant headwinds for the industry not yet factored into the group’s price, which they target at £10. Sell. £13.06. Hays The Sunday Telegraph The world’s largest white-collar recruiter is treading water in stricken times. Strong finances, its market-leading position and a focus on temporary workers in the IT and digital economy are reassuring. Hold. 155p. MoneySuperMarket.com ShareCast Liberum has cut its rating on the price comparison site, fearing that the ban on charging existing customers a “loyalty penalty” will hit…

An empty office building is a good place to shelter if you’re a rat in a crisis. It will be warm and dry and, if you’re lucky, one of the humans who hastily vacated before the last coronavirus lockdown will have left a half-eaten Pret flapjack in a drawer for you. Not that you’re fussy. The loss of your usual diet of commuter leftovers is a blow, but it’s not insurmountable. “Rats will always find something to eat,” says Richard Ashley, emeritus professor of urban water at the University of Sheffield. “Human waste is ideal, but any natural organic material will do. Houseplants are fine. Leather will do at a push.” You can usually find a way in via the toilets. As a rat, you’re neophobic, which means you don’t…

Controversy of the week Taking on Beijing “No one can stop the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” So said China’s top foreign affairs official, Yang Jiechi, last week, as he warned the US not to interfere in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. But stopping China is exactly what America’s new president plans to do, said the FT, even if he has disavowed the aggressive approach favoured by his predecessor. “We’ll meet the China challenge,” declared Joe Biden, “and ensure the American people win.” He has set up a Pentagon task force to deal with everything from cyberespionage to defence strategy. And he wants his European allies to help him, said Michael Schuman on Politico. Yet since China offers European companies a “treasure trove” of growth opportunities, many prefer not to.…

Washington DC Officer honoured: A Capitol Police officer who guided lawmakers to safety during the storming of the Capitol on 6 January has been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honour the Senate can bestow. Senators voted to award the medal to Eugene Goodman (pictured) last Friday, a day before they acquitted Donald Trump on a charge of “incitement to insurrection” (see page 22). The Democrats’ Senate leader Chuck Schumer cited Goodman’s “foresight in the midst of chaos, and his willingness to make himself a target of the mob’s rage so that others might reach safety”. This week, the Democrat speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the establishment by Congress of an “outside, independent” commission, modelled on the inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, to investigate the assault on the Capitol, during…

“Of course humans need social contact. Now and then, they also need to escape it. Most parents, I suspect, will know what I mean. Lockdown, for them, means no time for themselves. From dawn onwards, they’re cooking and cleaning and teaching and working, all at once, without pause. Meanwhile, their ears ring with two competing dins: the din of their children (‘DAAAAAAD’) and the din of their own frantic internal monologue (‘Oh God, I was meant to join that Zoom call ten minutes ago’). Finally, the children are put to bed. But even then, the parents struggle to relax. Later still, they struggle to sleep. And that’s because at no point in the day has either of them spent any time alone.” Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph…

Plain speech is the best way to expose tyranny Editorial The Economist To confront evil, it’s crucial to speak plainly and accurately, says The Economist. That is why the Biden administration’s depiction of China’s persecution of the Uighurs as “genocide” is a serious error. Undoubtedly the locking up of a million members of this ethnic minority in “vocational training centres”, and the forced sterilisation of its women, is “horrific”. It might even qualify as “genocide” under a loosely worded UN convention. But what’s now going on in Xinjiang isn’t what most people would call genocide. Indeed, until now, the US State Department has applied the label only to mass slaughter, and hesitated even then, lest it come under pressure to intervene. “It didn’t call Rwanda’s genocide a genocide until it…

The beads that beat Columbus We know how Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, in 1492. What is less clear is how beads from his native Italy got there at least 12 years before him. Radiocarbon dating of organic samples attached to Venetian glass beads found in Alaska has shown that European goods were being traded in the Americas from as early as 1440. The blue “trade” beads were excavated at Punyik Point, a known seasonal site for Inuit peoples, and dated to between 1440 and 1480. As it is unlikely they came across the Atlantic, the suggestion is that the beads, having originated in a workshop in Venice, were transported along the Silk Road to China – and then eastwards through Siberia to the Bering Strait, the channel that separates…

The Government is escalating its “war on woke”, said the Daily Express. Last month, the Communities Secretary, Robert Jenrick, promised to tweak planning laws to protect statues from “woke worthies”. Now, Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, has signalled plans to appoint the nation’s first “Free Speech Champion”, with powers to combat “no-platforming” on university campuses; Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, has revealed that he has summoned the heads of 25 heritage bodies and charities to a meeting, where he will tell them “to defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down”; and Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has branded last year’s Black Lives Matter protests “dreadful”, and said she’d never “take the knee”. This fightback is welcome, said Simon Heffer in…

Following their uplifting victory in the first Test against India, the second, also at Chennai, has proved a sobering comedown for England’s cricketers, said Ali Martin in The Guardian. On a pitch that turned from the opening day, Joe Root’s men managed only 134 in their first innings, in response to India’s 329. It was never likely to be enough. India’s victory duly arrived on day four, when England, set 482 to win, managed just 164 in their second innings. Little about the match gave the touring side cause to cheer, aside from the performance of wicketkeeper Ben Foakes who, as well as pulling off several brilliant stumpings, top-scored in England’s first innings with an unbeaten 42. As they head to Ahmedabad for the third Test – a “pink-ball” contest…

Essential biology To The Times Further to your report “‘Chestfeeding’ advice from trans-friendly midwives”: if Brighton and Sussex University NHS Trust needs a formal “gender inclusive language policy” to instruct staff to treat all patients with dignity and respect, then it has a bigger problem than “transphobia”. It is not “biological essentialism” to say that mothers give birth and breastfeed with mother’s milk. It is essential biology. Such attempts to control language may backfire on transgender people like me as the public tires of being told what they are expected to think. If even the facts of life are deemed to be transphobic, then perhaps transphobia has lost all meaning. Debbie Hayton, Birmingham Truly a world service To The Daily Telegraph In 1976, I was appointed to my first command,…

Mother for Dinner by Shalom Auslander Picador 272pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 Shalom Auslander’s last novel, Hope: A Tragedy, featured a “foul-mouthed and geriatric Anne Frank” among its characters, said Sam Leith in The Guardian. In his latest work, he again risks offending readers with a satire about cannibals being a “persecuted minority”. Seventh Seltzer is a New York publisher who belongs to a dwindling band of “Cannibal-Americans”. Having “married out” of his tribe, he no longer participates in family rituals. Yet when his mother summons him to her deathbed, hoping he’ll give her the traditional send-off – for which she has been fattening herself up – his cannibalistic instincts reassert themselves. Auslander can be a brilliantly funny writer, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times. Yet as a…

Films with dance in them are two a penny; films about dancers are rarer – but here are five fine examples, to which the bravest viewers might add the terrifying Suspiria (1977): The Red Shoes Martin Scorsese described Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 masterpiece as the most beautiful Technicolor film ever made. Moira Shearer stars as a ballerina torn between her love for a young composer and the demands of a tyrannical impresario (the brilliant Anton Walbrook). Strictly Ballroom Released in 1992, Baz Luhrmann’s first film is his most charming. The tale of a young contender (Paul Mercurio) trying to make it his own way in the kitsch world of provincial Australian ballroom dancing, it is wildly camp and absurd, but tender-hearted too. Billy Elliot Set during the miners’ strike of…

Tips of the week… lockdown stiffness ● If you don’t move around much, the muscles around the lower back are likely to weaken, leading to stiffness and back pain. Strengthening the abdominal and gluteal muscles can help, but to boost flexibility, try knee hugs – lie on your back with your knees bent and feet on the floor, then pull your knees to your chest and repeat. ● Sitting all day can tighten hip flexors, which can cause knee and back pain. Try a lunge position with one knee on the floor. Keep your torso upright, hands on your hips and bend the front knee to feel a stretch. ● To relieve shoulder pain, change position and move as often as you can. Try doing forward and backward shoulder rolls…

Mary Wilson 1944-2021 As a 15-year-old living in a housing project in Detroit, Mary Wilson co-founded one of the most successful (and glamorous) singing groups of the 1960s. She would remain with The Supremes until this Motown hit machine was finally dissolved in 1977 – having weathered numerous feuds, and the departure of both her co-founders, Florence Ballard and Diana Ross. If Ballard – who struggled with depression and alcoholism and died in poverty aged 32 – came to be seen as The Supremes’ tragic figure, and Ross as its international superstar, then Wilson was its “steady, omnipresent and outspoken driving force”, said Variety, and its linchpin; although, to her chagrin, “many viewed her as little more than a supplier of the backup hooks that supported Ross’s lead vocals”. As…

Motor journalists rarely mince their words about Jaguar, said Alan Tovey in The Daily Telegraph. Despite its lustrous history, the famed marque “is ailing to the point of struggling to justify its existence”, according to Jim Holder of Autocar. Will plans to “reimagine” it as an all-electric rival to Tesla deliver the necessary jump-start? Jaguar Land Rover’s new boss, Thierry Bolloré, has launched a radical £2.5bn-a-year plan that will see Jaguar ditch the internal combustion engine completely by 2025. Land Rover is also going electric, with the first battery-powered model scheduled for 2024. The company expects “almost zero” sales of internal combustion engine models by 2036. This is “the biggest overhaul of Britain’s largest automotive group in a decade”, said Peter Campbell in the FT. Last year, as the pandemic…

Japan resurgent The Nikkei 225 crossed the 30,000 point threshold “for the first time since August 1990” as investors “cheered signs of a rebound in the world’s third largest economy”, reported CNN Business. Boris Schlossberg of BK Asset Management reckons the outlook remains rosy for three key reasons: Japanese companies have the “best balance sheets in the world” (53% are net cash positive compared with 17% in the US); Japan remains “very cheap on a relative basis”; and the country has “a massive lead in robotics technologies”. Gold and silver shunned Bitcoin has hit yet another new record, rising above $50,000/unit. Could that, and the growing appetite for equities and riskier high-yielding bonds, be the reason why precious metal funds are being shunned? Gold and silver mutual funds and ETFs…

Edinburgh Back to school: Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that children will start returning to school in Scotland next week, as part of a “phased and gradual” process. The First Minister said nursery-age children, and those in primary years one to three, will go back to their classrooms on Monday, along with a few secondary school pupils who need to access particular facilities for their studies. She described the recent data on the spread of the virus as “encouraging”, but warned that all other lockdown rules would remain in place until at least the beginning of March, and that no further reopening of schools was likely before 15 March. She said her government hoped to publish a framework for Scotland’s exit from lockdown next week, but warned that the reopening of…

Lebowitz’s complaints The writer and commentator Fran Lebowitz is a relentlessly cranky New Yorker, who has lived in the city for 50 years. Among the myriad of things that annoy her are tourists, the smoking ban, the cult of wellness, mobile phones, the self-obsessed and the young. And aged 70, she lets rip in way that most of us don’t dare, says Sean O’Hagan in The Observer – speaking up for everyone whose default mode, unlike hers, is stoical silence and suppressed rage. Her comedy of complaint has won her plenty of critics. Does it annoy her that some people find her annoying? No, but it does baffle her. “I am always surprised at how angry people get at me, given I don’t have any power. So, you don’t agree…

An American pensioner grew so frustrated by the slow broadband speed at his home in LA that he paid $10,000 to advertise the problem in The Wall Street Journal. Having had no joy from customer services, Aaron M. Epstein, 90, penned an open letter to AT&T’s CEO bemoaning its service, and paid for it to appear on two quarter-page ads. He included his address and phone number and, sure enough, he got a call the next day, and the problem was swiftly fixed. “I’m not a frivolous spender,” said Epstein, “but in this instance it was money well spent”. A koala caused a five-vehicle pile-up by wandering onto a busy six-lane highway in Australia. Nobody was hurt in the crash in Adelaide, but it caused major delays until Nadia Tugwell,…

Spiders have been observed using silk pulleys to yank their prey off the ground, and so prevent their escape. It is this strategy that allows them to capture quarry as much as 50 times bigger than they are, including lizards and mice. For a study at the University of Trento, Italy, researchers inserted cockroaches into a black box where tangle-web spiders had set up home. Part of the Theridiidae family, these spiders are know for producing densely packed webs, with “gumfoot threads”, which hang down and trail on the ground. If a small bug like a fly lands on the threads, they are immediately yanked up by the tension from the web. Single threads are not strong enough to hoist up a cockroach, however, so when the roaches got stuck,…

Melania Trump is reportedly jealous of the positive media coverage Jill Biden has enjoyed since succeeding her as US First Lady, and has been “bitter and chilly” towards her husband since the pair left Washington. But mostly, she has been switching off from politics since their arrival at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and instead spends her time in an unvarying routine involving massages, nail care and facials. “She goes to the spa, has lunch, goes to the spa again and has dinner with Donald on the patio,” says a source. “Rinse and repeat. Every day.” Marvin Rees, the Mayor of Bristol, has revealed that he is an old friend of the Putin critic Alexei Navalny. The pair met when they were on the same fellowship programme at Yale in…

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.” Franz Kafka, quoted in The Guardian “There is no frigate like a book / To take us lands away.” Emily Dickinson, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “If I ever go to the electric chair, I’d like him to be sitting in my lap.” Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz on Louis B. Mayer, quoted in The Times “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley, quoted in the Lock Haven Express “How we fail is how we continue.” Poet Khadijah Queen, quoted in The Paris Review “Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues…

What a difference a tactical change can make, said Chris Foy in the Daily Mail. After leaving George Ford on the bench for most of the match against Scotland, Eddie Jones restored the fly-half to the starting line-up for England’s Six Nations encounter with Italy on Saturday. And the decision bore fruit: whereas against Scotland England had treated the ball “like a live grenade”, here they “remembered how to get their kicks from running in space and forcing the opposition to chase them”. True, this was in some ways a stuttering performance – England committed far too many handling errors – but inspired by Ford, they managed six tries in their 41-18 victory and at least “tried to play”. Scotland followed their historic win at Twickenham with a bitterly disappointing…

To The Daily Telegraph We have all learnt a lot during this awful pandemic. One saving grace has been the internet, with its ability to keep – among others – schools and businesses connected. Why, then, is it necessary to destroy homes, businesses and the countryside (which can never be recovered) with HS2? Jayne Robinson, Andover, Hampshire To The Daily Telegraph Jayne Robinson argues against HS2, on the grounds that it involves destroying homes and countryside. She might like to reflect that 4,000 miles of canals, 20,000 miles of railway (by 1914) and 2,173 miles of motorway have been built in Britain. These also, inevitably, involved the destruction of homes and countryside. The Roman military roads evolved into highways to improve the movement of people and goods. Faster and better…

How not to sell a stolen Picasso In 2012, thieves broke into the National Gallery in Athens and carried out “a near-perfect heist”, said Tessa Solomon on Artnews. They took an Italian Renaissance sketch, a work by Piet Mondrian and, most notably, Pablo Picasso’s 1939 painting Head of a Woman. The plan seems to have had just one flaw: the Picasso was just too famous to sell. Investigators believe that Head of a Woman, a cubist work which Picasso donated to the museum as a tribute to Greek resistance to Nazi occupation, was put up for sale on the country’s black market for nearly $20m, but that it never found a buyer. The thieves would have found it “impossible” to turn a profit without attracting attention to themselves. Two Albanians…

Alice asks Brian about taking a year’s maternity leave. He gives her money towards baby expenses but Alice thinks she’ll use it to pay off the debt from her detox. As she’s on the phone to Chris, he injures his hand. It doesn’t look too bad but they decide to cancel dinner with Peggy. Neil gets a call from Brian when the disastrous interview appears in The Borchester Echo – Neil and Susan’s words have been twisted, but the BL Board are furious and his job may be at risk. A terrified Susan confides in Tracy: online trolls have made threats following the interview, but she doesn’t want to worry Neil. Tracy later tells Neil, revealing that Susan has also given up on getting her radio show back; Neil vows…

What the experts recommend Kale crisps: the perfect snack Kale is in season at the moment – and one of the most delicious ways to eat this sometimes challenging vegetable is in the form of crisps, says Emily Kydd in BBC Good Food. They make the perfect pre-dinner snack. Start by chopping, washing and thoroughly drying 100g of chunky kale. Place in a large bowl, tearing any large leaves into smaller pieces, and then drizzle over half a tablespoon of oil, massaging it into the kale. Sprinkle over one heaped teaspoon of ras-el-hanout and some sea salt, mix well, then tip the kale on two baking trays lined with baking parchment, spread the leaves out in a single layer and cook in a 150°C oven for 18-22 minutes, until the…

The Daily Telegraph Peugeot has been quite clever with the 5008. While seven-seat MPVs (people carriers) are not currently as in demand as large SUVs, there is no denying they are more practical vehicles. So the carmaker has given the 5008 the exterior styling of a trendy SUV. It is not available with four-wheel drive, and it doesn’t have great ground clearance, but it will tick a lot of boxes. What Car? While its footprint is not as big as that of its rivals, the 5008 has more than enough space for seven adults to sit comfortably. Visibility is great, and all cars come with front and rear parking sensors and a reversing camera. The “stylish” interior boasts ambient lighting and an “eclectic” mix of materials. Smartphone mirroring comes as…

Amazon/Reliance: food fight India’s $850bn retail market is often described as the industry’s “last growth frontier”, said Nikhil Inamdar on BBC News. Hence the increasingly fraught legal battle between “two of the world’s richest men” – Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries – for control of Future Retail, whose assets include the ubiquitous supermarket giant Big Bazaar. Although still mostly a bricks-and-mortar business, Future is seen as key to conquering India’s nascent grocery e-commerce market. When Reliance bought the outfit for $3.4bn last August, Amazon saw red and managed to have the sale blocked at an arbitration tribunal in Singapore, on grounds it had struck its own deal with a Future subsidiary. The high court in Delhi upheld the ruling earlier this month – but…

The City’s trading crown goes Dutch... Jill Treanor The Sunday Times In 1602, Amsterdam hosted “the world’s first IPO” when stakes in the Dutch East India Company went on sale, says Jill Treanor. Now, the home of Europe’s “oldest bourse” is having another moment. In the most potent symbol yet of the impact of Brexit on financial services, Amsterdam has overtaken London as the largest European share-trading hub: an average of s9.2bn shares were traded daily in the Netherlands last month, compared with s8.6bn in the City. We shouldn’t overdo the significance of this. The main reason share-trading has ended up in Amsterdam is that “big London platforms” selected the city as “their Brexit contingency base”; and much of the trading went through Turquoise, a platform part-owned by the London…