Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1320 i The Week

“As road maps go, it’s hardly the full AA atlas,” said the Daily Mail. Boris Johnson’s keenly awaited plan to lead England out of lockdown takes us “out of the cul-de-sac we’ve been stuck in since December”, but we’re still a long way from the open road. Aside from the welcome return of all pupils to schools on 8 March (see opposite), the only other change on that day will be that two people from different households will be able to meet in a public outdoor place. Thereafter, restrictions will be eased at three- and then five-weekly intervals, if conditions allow. On 29 March, there will be a relaxation of rules on outdoor sport and socialising. All being well, shops, hairdressers and pub gardens will then reopen on 12 April.…

The good news on vaccines keeps on flowing, said Tom Whipple in The Times. In the latest wave, studies released this week showed that the UK’s inoculation programme is already reducing deaths, hospital admissions and the R number. Four weeks after a first dose, the Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca jabs cut hospital admissions by 85% and 94% respectively, according to research led by Public Health Scotland. There’s also evidence that the Pfizer jab “significantly cuts transmission” of Covid-19. But the success of the vaccine roll-out is beginning to raise some thorny questions, said the FT. Could employers follow through on threats to introduce “no jab, no job” hiring policies? Might travellers be issued with “vaccination passports” or certificates allowing them to prove they’ve been inoculated? Could such passes even be used…

Uber drivers, after the UK Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that they should be classed as employees – with all the protections and benefits that entails. Uber had argued that its workers were self-employed “partners” (see page 41). Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old cancer survivor from Tennessee, who is scheduled to become the youngest civilian to go into space. She was selected to join the crew of the first all-civilian space mission, which is due to blast off later this year.…

From 8 March, care home residents in England will be able to be visited inside by a designated person, and hold their hand. The visitor will not need to have had a Covid jab, but will be required to have a test beforehand, and to wear personal protective equipment. Visits are also due to resume in Scotland early next month. Relatives’ groups have been campaigning for more access to care homes, saying that regular contact with familiar faces is vital for people with conditions such as dementia.…

Berlin Vaccine concerns: Angela Merkel has told her party that Germany is now in its “third wave” of coronavirus infections, it was reported this week. The Chancellor was also said to have warned that lockdown restrictions, which were recently extended to 7 March, would have to be eased slowly, to avoid “ups and downs”. Earlier in the week, various politicians had urged German citizens to accept the AstraZeneca vaccine, following reports that thousands were skipping appointments if they were offered it, and asking for the Pfizer one instead, complicating the country’s already slow vaccine roll-out. Health Minister Jens Spahn (pictured) called it a “privilege” to be offered an injection with the “safe and effective” UK-Swedish jab, while the mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller, said those who refused it should be…

1 I’ve Got You Under My Skin by Cole Porter, performed by Ella Fitzgerald 2 Suite bergamasque, L.75 – 3. Clair de lune by Claude Debussy, performed by Tamás Vásáry 3 Lara Says Goodbye to Yuri (Lara’s Theme) by Maurice Jarre for the Doctor Zhivago soundtrack 4 Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words) by Bart Howard, performed by Frank Sinatra 5 Oggi Sono Io by Alex Britti, performed by Mina 6 The Marketplace at Limoges by Modest Mussorgsky, performed by Carlo Ponti and the Russian National Orchestra 7 Io sì (Seen) by Diane Warren, Laura Pausini and Niccolò Agliardi, performed by Laura Pausini 8* Caruso, written and performed by Lucio Dalla Book: Letters from a Young Father by Edoardo Ponti Luxury: a pizza oven * Choice if allowed…

A fugitive has handed himself in to Sussex Police because, after weeks in lockdown with his housemates, he was desperate for some “peace and quiet”. Inspector Darren Taylor said that a “wanted man” had given himself up last week, saying that he “would rather go back to prison than have to spend any more time with the people he was living with”. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian couple have chained themselves together for three months in a bizarre test of their love. Alexander Kudlay, 33, and Viktoria Pustovitova, 28, joined themselves at the wrist with a chain on Valentine’s Day, in an audacious bid to set a national record. They had extra zips sewn into clothes to help them dress – and have even devised ways of giving each other some privacy…

BELARUS Callow young officials jailing their peers Novaya Gazeta (Moscow) The judicial crackdown in Belarus is becoming ever more absurd, says Irina Khalip. Some 30,000 people were arrested in the protests that followed the rigged re-election of Alexander Lukashenko last August – and many of their cases are now reaching court. Among those sentenced last week were two young journalists, Yekaterina Andreeva and Darya Chultsova, each of whom faces two years in jail after being found guilty of orchestrating protests in Minsk, disrupting public transport, and causing public damage. Never mind that the two women were simply doing their jobs, in spite of the risk of violence from the authorities. What’s really disturbing is the youthful make-up of the court: the sentencing judge was a mere 31, while the prosecutor…

Dogs have been trained to sniff out the most lethal form of prostate cancer, a development that could inspire the creation of a “robot nose” to identify the disease before symptoms appear. The dogs (a labrador and a vizsla) were taught to identify volatile organic compounds in the urine of patients with Gleason 9 prostate cancer. In tests, they showed 71% sensitivity (the rate at which they correctly identified positive samples), and 70-76% specificity – the rate at which they correctly ignored negative samples, including those from people with other prostate diseases. These results, said the researchers, compared favourably with those of the PSA blood test for prostate cancer. Using dogs to screen for cancer is not “scalable”; but they hope to develop a device, perhaps in the form of…

“A pandemic is a tricky time for a party of opposition,” said The Times. During a national crisis, most voters “value a bipartisan approach”. Labour’s dilemma is that it is “vulnerable to losing support if it attacks the Government’s handling of the pandemic, but is unlikely to gain credit from backing the Government’s measures”. Keir Starmer has performed adequately in these difficult circumstances: he shows a command of policy detail that makes him a threat to Boris Johnson, and he has made progress in repairing the damage done by Jeremy Corbyn. But he is undeniably finding it difficult to “break through”: Labour is lagging the Conservatives in the opinion polls, and there are “rumblings of dissatisfaction” in the party that he has failed to set out a bold vision. His…

Nasa had promised “seven minutes of terror” – and watching the landing phase of its Mars mission last week was indeed “nailbiting”, said Angela Watercutter on Wired. The rocket carrying the agency’s Perseverance rover had blasted off in July. Six months and 293 million miles later, it hurtled into the Red Planet’s orbit at 12,100mph. What followed was a sequence of events that was highly complex, and entirely automated. First, a heat shield was used to protect the craft from temperatures of up to 1,300ºC; then, seven miles from the surface, a parachute was deployed to slow it down from around 940mph; finally, seconds before landing, the craft started to hover, while a piece of technology called a sky crane gently lowered the rover onto the surface using nylon cords.…

Sooner or later, it was “bound to happen”, said Max Rushden in The Guardian. Last week, a referee “became headline news” for aggressively confronting a dissenting player. Darren Drysdale was officiating a League Two clash between Northampton and Ipswich when Ipswich player Alan Judge went to ground inside his penalty area. Outraged by the decision not to award a penalty, the midfielder angrily confronted the referee. In the exchange that followed, Drysdale stooped down and briefly locked heads with Judge – before booking him for simulation. Although Drysdale later apologised, the FA has charged him with misconduct, and he is likely to face a ban. That is probably the right decision, but “let’s not go overboard”. This was “one brief loss of control” in a 16-year career; the FA should…

Fear eats the soul To The Daily Telegraph Lucy Worsley is right to say that fear links the experiences of Covid and the Blitz. I was seven and I remember that we caught the fear from the grown-ups. At first, it was almost an adventure; but after a while, anxiety was transferred. Already, grownup nerves were taut because families were involved in the fighting. But now there was a shared pattern of direct involvement. First came the siren and the rush for shelter. Then whispers in the semi-dark, the throb of the planes and noise of anti-aircraft guns. Then the bombs. I became aware of the random way they fell; a micro-second on the release button could mean a difference of life or death. We emerged from the shelter either…

Van Gogh drawing to break records A reed-pen portrait of a young Provençal girl is likely to become the most expensive van Gough drawing ever sold when it goes under the hammer next month, said Anna Pujol-Mazzini in The Daily Telegraph. Entitled La Mousmé, it was created in 1888, at a time when van Gogh had become fascinated by Japanese art, and spent much of his time poring over Japanese woodcuts. He had left Paris for the city of Arles (which he referred to as the “Japan of the south”) in search of peace and nature. He spent the summer there painting “landscapes of golden wheat fields”; then, when rain forced him to move indoors, he began to focus on portraits. The drawing (pictured) is a detail from an oil…

Tom apologises to Kirsty for not helping her in her search for the lads. Lynda has plans to “cleanse” Ambridge after the slavery revelations: she wants to put on a new version of The Mystery Plays with Kirsty as producer, but Kirsty says no. After Tom shows him Peggy’s disparaging birthday message, Tony is furious and says she is no longer welcome at his 70th party – he’s had enough. Emma and Rex talk as he helps her build an obstacle course in the playground for her anti-slavery charity event. He tells her about his eviction from Brookfield and she encourages him to follow his dream. After prompting from Tom, Lillian visits Tony and encourages him to get over his irritation with Peggy and have her at the party. Helen…

600g organic wholemeal, stoneground heritage grain flour (or 500g wholemeal flour and 100g strong white organic bread flour, if you want the loaves to rise more) 400g of warm water 200g sourdough starter (see tip below) 6g of flaked sea salt • Mixing and kneading: place the flour in a mixing bowl, make a well and pour in the water. Mix thoroughly, until all of the ingredients have been incorporated. Leave for at least an hour. • Add the sourdough starter and salt to the bowl. Mix well. Scrape the dough on to a work surface and, for several minutes, gently stretch and fold, lifting the corners of the dough into the middle and pressing down lightly. Return the dough to the bowl. After half an hour, repeat the stretching…

Rising inflation – sparked by the huge US financial stimulus plan and improving global economic indicators – spooked equity and bond markets and pushed up the cost of government borrowing. The yield on benchmark 10-year US Treasury notes climbed to 1.4%, the highest in a year. Headline inflation in the eurozone climbed to 0.9% in January, an 11-month high, mainly due to a spike in energy costs. Business leaders in Britain generally welcomed the clarity given by the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown, but urged more help for ailing sectors and an extension of the furlough, and business rates and VAT relief. Official statistics showed that UK unemployment hit a five-year high of 5.1% in the three months to December, with 1.7 million people out of work. But economists argued…

● Swingin’ affair “Wild price swings are a familiar issue with cryptocurrencies,” said Anthony Cuthbertson in The Independent. But even by those standards, this week’s movements were extreme. Having briefly hit a new all-time high above $58,000 on Sunday, the price of bitcoin plunged by 20% in just over 24 hours. Other digicurrencies – including Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin and Dogecoin – also fell sharply, wiping more than $400bn from their combined market value. The reason for “this massive adjustment” wasn’t immediately clear. It was probably compounded by “stop-loss trades”, ensuring that bitcoin is “automatically sold if it falls below a certain level”. And the intervention of US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen – who described it as “highly speculative” and “extremely inefficient” for transactions – probably didn’t help, said Barrons. But…

Dame Carolyn Fairbairn As boss of the CBI, Carolyn Fairbairn “won credit for demanding Britain leave the EU with a deal”, said the Daily Mail. She’s clearly no slouch when it comes to cutting deals herself. In the space of a week, Fairbairn has landed two meaty non-exec directorships: at defence contractor BAE Systems and at HSBC. First an arms dealer, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. Now the bank famous for freezing the accounts of pro-democracy campaigners. Dame Carolyn has certainly “got off to a nice ethical start, underlining what she meant by all those speeches on ‘inclusive capitalism’”. The HSBC gig comes with fees of £244,000 a year, “which at least fits the capitalism bit”. What next? British American Tobacco? Vlad Tenev The co-founder of the US trading…

A non-profit website and app that enables listeners to tune into radio stations all over the world has had a surge in users, as people confined to their own countries in lockdown have found new ways to explore other cultures. Radio Garden has a map of the world, covered in 30,000 dots, each representing a station. Click on a dot, and it tunes you into the station. “People should be able to get lost and use their ears to paint a picture of the location,” said one of its founders. A doctor from Sheffield who realised that his fear of flying would mean he’d never see a jungle has grown one in his garden. Dr Simon Olpin, a biochemist at the Sheffield Children’s Hospital, has spent 30 years on the…

It’s ironic that “a prime minister who is committed to preserving the United Kingdom” can’t even preserve unity within the team appointed to help him do it, said Rachel Sylvester in The Times. Two heads of Downing Street’s “Union unit” have left within weeks – most recently Oliver Lewis, who resigned last Friday after being accused of briefing the press that Michael Gove was too soft on the SNP. But Lewis, a veteran of the Vote Leave campaign, may also have been the victim of a No. 10 power struggle between the Vote Leave crew and those with the backing of Boris Johnson’s fiancée Carrie Symonds – who is supposed to have pushed for the removal of Dominic Cummings last year. Even Dilyn the dog has been caught up in…

Donald Trump, who was ordered by the US Supreme Court to hand his tax returns and other financial records to prosecutors in New York. Trump had been fighting for months to prevent them from coming before a grand jury; they will now be scrutinised in secret and may only become public if he is indicted. Elon Musk, as his brief reign as the world’s richest man came to an end, owing to a sharp fall in the share value of his company, Tesla. The 8.5% fall came after he tweeted that the price of bitcoin does “seem high”; Tesla had recently invested $1.5bn in bitcoin, sending the price soaring to record levels. Cybersecurity, with warnings that online fraudsters are ditching big money scams in favour of “silent stealing” – defrauding…

More than 36% of adults in France, 32% in Italy and Germany and 31% in Britain now believe that health ministries are working with pharmaceutical companies to cover up vaccine risks. 42% in France, 41% in Britain, 40% in Italy and 39% in Germany also feel that governments are exploiting the crisis to “control and monitor” citizens. Cevipof/The Guardian 67% of women are supervising their children’s homeschooling, while 52% of men are. 53% of women doing homeschooling say it is having a negative impact on their well-being, compared with 45% of men. 53% of homeschooling parents say it is putting a strain on their relationships, and 37% that their job has been negatively affected. ONS/The Guardian…

“We haven’t heard much from the Liberal Democrats lately, so it’s good to learn that Ed Davey, their leader, is on Xi Jinping’s case. In a story headlined by The Guardian as ‘Lib Dems warn China over international bullying’, he demands ‘an urgent response’ over reports China will impose sanctions on countries that boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. One is reminded of the small-town Irish newspaper, The Skibbereen Eagle, which warned the Tsar of Russia in 1898 that it would ‘keep its eye’ on him and his despotic behaviour. Xi should ponder the Tsar’s fate: he was overthrown and executed two decades later.” Peter Wilby in the New Statesman…

The big freeze was a failure of government Andrew Exum The Atlantic “The great winter storm of 2021 has terrorised Texans,” says Andrew Exum. As the state was blanketed with snow last week, and the mercury plummeted to lows not seen for decades, the grid was overwhelmed, and millions of people were left without power for days. My family spent one night last week huddled in a tent in the children’s bedroom to keep warm. Other families resorted to burning their belongings. Uniquely among US states, proudly independent Texas maintains its own grid – and it has proved utterly unequal to the challenge. Our conservative politicians, who have spent years “mercilessly teasing” progressives in California over their management of failing services, are now trying to blame the power cuts on…

The world’s first human “challenge trial” for Covid-19 is to start in the UK within weeks. A team at Imperial College London is recruiting 90 healthy volunteers aged 18-30 who will be infected, via nasal drops, with low doses of the virus in a controlled environment at the Royal Free Hospital, in London. They will be monitored for 24 hours a day for the next 14 days; and then have follow-up appointments over the course of a year. In hospital, doctors will give them cognitive tests to assess how the virus affects brain function, and use “scratch and sniff” cards to investigate its impact on the sense of smell. Other aims of the study include finding out the smallest virus load required to become infected; how the disease progresses after…

The Covid pandemic poses a threat to more than just public health and the economy, said The Times. It also presents Western democracies with a diplomatic challenge. For while they’ve been preoccupied with vaccinating their own populations, China and Russia have been busily courting other nations by selling or giving them doses of their homegrown vaccines. Among those to have received Chinese help are Egypt, Turkey, Chile and Serbia. Moscow, meanwhile, has distributed doses of its Sputnik V vaccine to countries such as Hungary and Mexico. Both Russia and China have drawn unflattering comparisons between their efforts and what the World Health Organisation has decried as “vaccine hoarding” by the West. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, last week urged Europe and the US to donate 4%-5% of their vaccine stocks…

“To achieve great things you need a plan and not quite enough time.” Leonard Bernstein, quoted on The Browser “As you get older, you don’t get wiser. You get irritable.” Author Doris Lessing, quoted on GoodReads “We are going to do a terrible thing to you: we are going to deprive you of an enemy.” Soviet adviser Georgi Arbatov to a US audience in 1988, quoted in the FT “Social media is not primarily a market place of ideas. It’s a marketplace of identities.” David Baddiel in The Sunday Times “In England, justice is open to all – like the Ritz hotel.” Judge Sir James Mathew, quoted in The Times “To succeed pre-eminently in English public life, it is necessary to conform either to the popular image of a bookie…

It has to be “one of the greatest shocks” in the history of snooker, said Hector Nunns in The Times. On Sunday night, in the final of the Welsh Open, Jordan Brown, a virtually unheard-of player from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, beat one of the sport’s all-time greats, Ronnie O’Sullivan. Brown is ranked 81 in the world, and last season nearly fell off the tour. As recently as three years ago, he was working part-time as a garage attendant. “But somehow, in the biggest match of his life, [he] showed nerves of steel” to take advantage of O’Sullivan’s many mistakes. He ended up edging a tense encounter 9-8, winning the deciding frame with a 74 break. Improbable as Brown’s victory was, it certainly wasn’t a fluke, said Shane MacDermott in…

To The Times Further to your report “Minister hits out at campuses that ‘stifle freedom of speech’”, to promote free speech in universities the Government must curb the undue influence of lobby groups such as Stonewall. My institution, like many universities (and the Department for Education), is a Stonewall Diversity Champion. Membership requires the adoption of policies that undermine freedom to debate. Oxford University’s equality policies (typical of the sector) claim “gender identity” is “assigned at birth”, and define women as a “gender” rather than as a sex – which we legally are, under the Equality Act 2010. This is an ideological stance. It leaves those of us whose teaching and scholarship concern women, or rely on sex-disaggregated data, open to complaint and attack for our lawful view that biological…

Stephen Hough: Vida Breve Hyperion £10.50 There is “something for every pianophile” on this “characteristically ingenious concept album” from the British-Australian pianist and composer Stephen Hough, said Hugh Canning in The Sunday Times. Consisting of a series of pieces by great composers, it has as its climax Hough’s own 2018 sonata Vida Breve. The theme linking them is death, starting with Busoni’s famous piano transcription of the chaconne from Bach’s second violin partita, and continuing with Chopin’s “Funeral March” sonata and Liszt’s Funérailles. In the Chopin, Hough’s playing draws on his love of operatic bel canto and is “seamlessly lyrical”, while there’s a “demonically witty glint” to Liszt’s Bagatelle sans tonalité. His accounts of these works is “arresting”, agreed Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. His performance of the…

In the 1990s, two news reporters – married couple Bob Tur and Marika Gerrard – went up in helicopters to capture live footage of unfolding news events in LA. As this “fascinating” documentary recounts, they hovered above the city to film the riots in 1992 and O.J. Simpson’s attempted verbally and physically; they divorced in 2003, and – in a final twist – he had gender reassignment surgery, and became Zoey. Being film-makers, the pair took their camera everywhere, and so we can watch the family disintegrate. Zoey is “honest about her past behaviour”, flight from justice in 1994. It was “heart-in-mouth” work, said Euan Ferguson in The Observer, at which they excelled – partly because of Bob’s obsessive personality. In the second, yet more “absorbing”, half of Whirlybird: Live…

Best books… Katherine Rundell The children’s author chooses her best books to take you on an adventure – three for adults, three for children. Her book Skysteppers (Bloomsbury) is one of this year’s £1 titles for World Book Day, on 4 March (worldbookday.com) The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, 1922 (Vintage £11.99). Cherry-Garrard was one of the survivors of Scott’s expedition to the South Pole. His account is as swift and vivid as a thriller, and opens: “Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.” The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, 1844 (Vintage £9.99). Dumas’s work is addictive: brilliant and strange and so gripping it’s like being electrocuted. This is an astonishing book,…

Tips of the week... how to find and deal with damp ● Damage to gutters, downpipes and roof tiles can often cause damp. Regularly check gutters for blockages or cracks, removing dirt and debris, and make sure downpipes are properly connected. ● Reconnecting gutters and resealing joints can be straightforward using parts and sealant found at DIY stores. Look for parts with built-in rubber seals. ● Yellow-coloured stains around a chimney breast could indicate that seals or flashing need repairing (by a professional). ● If you notice stains or a damp smell, check exterior walls for disintegration – mortar and pointing breaks that can let in cold air and water. White, almost fluffy, patches on bricks or a sandy feeling on porous stone walls could indicate moisture. Try a waterproof…

The clan chief who wrote the Macpherson Report Sir William Macpherson 1926-2021 When Doreen and Neville Lawrence learnt that William Macpherson had been appointed to the inquiry into “matters arising” from the murder of their 18-year-old son Stephen, in a racially motivated attack on 22 April 1993, they were not impressed, said The Guardian. Macpherson’s rulings, as a high court judge, suggested a conservative, possibly illiberal outlook; as a former Army officer, and the 27th chief of his Scottish clan, he was clearly an establishment man; and as another lawyer put it, he was not “exactly up to date with racial awareness training”. The Lawrences’ lawyers asked for him to be removed; but as the hearing got under way, the Lawrences and their supporters realised that Macpherson was a man…

In a potentially major setback for “gig economy” companies, 35 Uber drivers have won a landmark UK Supreme Court battle to be classified as “workers”, said Lex in the Financial Times. As a result they are entitled to employment rights such as the minimum wage, paid holidays and protection against unlawful deductions: “good news for drivers, but a kick in the tyres for Uber”. Assuming that the ruling “fans out beyond the initial clutch of 35 drivers”, it will change “the rules of engagement with some 60,000 drivers in the UK” – one of Uber’s biggest markets – and potentially millions of gig workers globally if they unite behind it. Doubtless Deliveroo, which is scheduled to announce a blockbuster float next month, is already tailoring its prospectus. fundamentally change our…

Marshmallow An “insurtech” outfit looking to transform motor insurance by selling cover to those turned away elsewhere. Valued at £233m in 2020. Sugar A financing platform that offers short-term loans to games developers and app studios. Claims other lenders “don’t really understand” this market. Fronted Helps private tenants finance rental deposits, and offers a cheaper alternative to payday loans, with a fixed 12.5% interest rate and a one-year term. ClauseMatch An online platform that helps big financial firms manage their compliance documentation. Counts Barclays and Revolut as customers. YuLife A new-breed life insurer which uses “gamification” to incentivise customers to adopt healthy lifestyles. Virtual “Yu Coins” can be earned via exercise and meditation activities. Laka Provides crowdsourced insurance for cyclists. Rather than paying upfront, users split the cost of any…

The week’s best shares AstraZeneca Investors Chronicle The pharma has pledged to tackle new Covid variants. Acquiring US pharma Alexion will boost its immunology arm; sales in oncology, cardiovascular, renal and metabolism medications are up. Buy. £73.08. Experian The Mail on Sunday The data firm, now operating in 45 countries, helps consumers manage their credit scores and runs checks on behalf of banks and online retailers. It looks set to benefit from increased reliance on data. Buy £24.89. International Consolidated Airlines Group The Sunday Telegraph Post-virus economic recovery could drive a turnaround for the BA owner after a travel ban hammering. Risky, but ICA has slashed costs, scaled back capex, and boosted finances with a rights issue. Buy. 166p. JD Sports Fashion The Times The “accomplished” trainers and sportswear retailer…

If there was one bright spot in this week’s announcement on the easing of lockdown, said The Daily Telegraph, it was undoubtedly the news that schools are finally set to reopen. After missing a combined 840 million days of classroom education, all children in England will return to their classrooms from 8 March (in Scotland and Wales, a more staggered return is already under way). True, mass testing will be required in secondary schools, and secondary school pupils will have to wear face coverings in classrooms where distancing is not possible. Regardless of such restrictions, this is a hugely welcome development. Millions of young people have had their education “trashed” by the on-off lockdowns of the past year. “Attainment disparities have widened, and less advantaged groups have fared the worst.”…

Councillors in Denbighshire have decided that streets in the Welsh county will no longer be named after public figures, celebrities or other individuals in case those people later become controversial. The council’s cabinet said there is too much risk that names will not stand the test of time, and it takes “a lot of work” to change them. The only exceptions would be for people deemed “extraordinary”, such as Captain Sir Tom Moore. Staff at Pricewaterhouse Coopers have been holding meetings at the top of skyscrapers, and inside luxury ski chalets – using VR headsets. The accountancy giant’s UK offices currently use VR to cheer up a few meetings a week, and hope to have 400 headsets by the end of the year.…

Rape victims are up to 20 times less likely to get justice in some parts of England and Wales than in others, a new analysis of Home Office data by The Sunday Telegraph has shown. The lowest performing force, Wiltshire, charged just one alleged rapist out of 200 in the most recently reported six-month period, while the top force, Durham, secured charges in 20 of 169 alleged rapes. The charge rates were 0.5% and 11.8%, respectively; across England and Wales the rate is 1.5%, down from 10.9% five years ago. Campaigners say 42.2% of complainants now withdraw their cases because of the low likelihood of a conviction, invasive disclosure demands and the anticipated trauma of a trial.…

Edinburgh Future plans: Scotland’s economy could start to reopen from 26 April, according to a “deliberately cautious” road map unveiled by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon this week. On that date, if all goes to plan, shops, bars, restaurants and hairdressers will be able to open their doors. However, the broader reopening of society began this week, she said, with children in the first three years of primary school returning to school. All other primary children, and some older secondary pupils, will go back on 15 March; however, children in the first three years of secondary school may not go back until the start of the summer term. From 15 March, four people from two households will be able to meet outside, and Sturgeon said that she hoped the “stay at…

Kim Novak looks back Kim Novak’s Hollywood career may have been brief – but her legacy is long-lasting. Four years after her first major role in 1954’s Pushover, she starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The film was panned on its release, but is now regarded as one of the greatest ever made. “My critics are much kinder to me than they used to be,” she says. Yet it wasn’t just critics who gave her a hard time. She was signed to Columbia, and its boss, the notorious Harry Cohn, treated her appallingly: he dubbed her the “fat Polack” (though he knew her parents were Czech); and controlled every aspect of her appearance. He also made sure her rumoured romance with Sammy Davis Jr went nowhere (fearing an inter-racial relationship would…

Jobs for the boys and girls at No. 10 Polly Toynbee The Guardian The word “chumocracy” barely does justice to what Britain has become under this most unprincipled of governments, says Polly Toynbee. Last week, the High Court ruled that Boris Johnson’s administration had acted unlawfully by awarding multimillion-pound Covid-related contracts with wholesale disregard for transparency: contacts of ministers, MPs, peers and officials had been ten times more likely to win contracts for protective equipment. This was no one-off “emergency” response. Favouring friends has been this Government’s “modus operandi”, prompting a rare complaint from the commissioner for public appointments over the “unregulated” elevation of cronies. It awarded, without tender, a £564,393 polling contract to Rachel Wolf, a co-writer of the 2019 Tory manifesto and “close chum” of the PM’s ex-aide,…

Can Trumpism survive without Trump? The former president believes so, said Megan McArdle in The Washington Post, and so do those – like the Republican senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – now jostling to take on his mantle. Yet it’s unclear what remains of Trumpism, once you have taken the man himself out of the mix. His administration was characterised less by a policy agenda than by “the utter lack of one”. There was no consistency: he “promised voters a thousand different and often mutually contradictory things”. Trump’s success rested on his larger-than-life celebrity persona. He was an object of fascination because he was that rare breed – a “wealthy guy who talked like a working-class guy”. Beyond that, there’s no real legacy. “Trump’s voters can’t be captured by…

How to stop the feline slaughter To stop your cat massacring local wildlife, change its diet – and play with it more. Researchers have discovered that cats that are fed premium, grain-free food deposit a third fewer corpses on doorsteps, while just five to ten minutes play with a toy mouse cuts the slaughter of birds and small mammals by a quarter, reports The Guardian. As the UK’s estimated 7.5 million domestic cats are believed to be responsible for the deaths of 100 million animals a year, such changes, if widely adopted, could lead to millions of animal lives saved a year, without interfering with cats’ natural behaviour. “Cats like the thrill of the hunt,” said lead author Prof Robbie McDonald of the University of Exeter. “Previous measures like bells…

Sophia Loren has long been known as a Scrabble whiz, and in the past she has boasted about beating Richard Burton at the game, on the set of 1974’s The Voyage. “Despite his immense knowledge and huge vocabulary, he succumbed to my supremacy,” she wrote of those battles. But it turns out she wasn’t playing fair. “I like to cheat because I have fun,” she confessed on Desert Island Discs. “I was beating Richard Burton a lot and when he found out he said, ‘I’m not going to play with you again’.” Kate Winslet has admitted that she often takes items from the sets she has worked on, and finds space for them at home. She took all the curtains from her character’s cottage in The Holiday, and has a…

A “battle of the generations”. That’s how they billed last Sunday’s Australian Open men’s final between Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev, said Stuart Fraser in The Times. In the event, it was “a 113-minute lesson delivered” by the 33-year-old Serb, who vanquished the challenge of his 25-year-old Russian opponent to win a record-extending ninth Australian title. Medvedev, the world No. 4, entered the match on a 20-match winning streak, having defeated the world No. 1 in three of their past four encounters. But “the form book mattered not a jot”. After edging a tight first set 7-5, Djokovic reeled off sets two and three for the loss of just four games, overwhelming his opponent with his depth and consistency. As Medvedev’s errors mounted, he became increasingly frustrated, and smashed his…

Sailing In the Prada Cup final, Ineos Team UK lost 7-1 to the Italian team Luna Rossa. Football Premier League leaders Manchester City beat Arsenal 1-0 to make it 18 straight wins for Pep Guardiola’s side. Everton beat Liverpool 2-0 – their first victory at Anfield since 1999. Rugby union London Irish drew 34-34 with Premiership leaders Bristol Bears, taking them to seventh place. Cricket New Zealand beat Australia by 53 runs in their T20 series opener at home in Christchurch.…

Offering a heady blend of humour and suspense, the caper movie is often seen as the lighter cousin of the heist film. The recent Netflix hit Lupin is an engaging, series-length example; here are five of its cinematic forebears: The Lavender Hill Mob An early example of the genre, Charles Crichton’s exhilarating 1951 Ealing comedy stars Alec Guinness as a Pooter-esque bank clerk who devises the perfect robbery: smuggling £1m worth of gold to France in the form of Eiffel Tower paperweights. The Italian Job Its casual sexism and jingoism have not aged well, and some of its best lines have been overused by fans, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had from this 1969 classic. Michael Caine’s cockney wide boy is nicely balanced by Noël Coward’s urbane…

Of all the art events scheduled for this year, perhaps the most hotly anticipated is the Royal Academy’s Marina Abramović retrospective, said Eddy Frankel in Time Out. The show will examine the Serbian artist’s 50-year career, from her youth in communist Yugoslavia to her present-day status as “the world’s most famous performance artist”, and it will include many of her most notable works. These will mainly be restaged by younger performers – though if distancing measures permit, the 74-year-old artist will also perform a piece. It is not yet clear what this might involve, but Abramović’s work often focuses on the limits of physical and emotional endurance, said Emine Saner in The Guardian – and she is famous for putting herself unusually close to her audience. In 2010, a record-breaking…

The culinary stars of TikTok If you thought TikTok was “purely for teenagers to show off their dance moves, think again”, says Harry Wallop in The Times. The Chinese-owned social media site is also a place “where food trends start”. From dalgona coffee (made by adding whipped instant coffee, sugar and water to cold milk) to tornado omelettes (a Korean egg dish), the site has been at the centre of several recent crazes. TikTok isn’t used much by the “established big names in cooking”, who generally prefer YouTube and Instagram. But it has spawned a new generation of influencers who are skilled at presenting recipes in 60 seconds (the maximum length videos can be). The “poster girl for TikTok cooks” is 26-year-old Poppy O’Toole, who trained in a Michelin-starred Birmingham…

The Daily Telegraph Vauxhall’s original Mokka, launched in 2012, sold well in the UK’s competitive SUV crossover market despite its “underwhelming interior and dynamics”. And now the maker has improved the car. In its second iteration, the Mokka is better to drive and it comes in a battery electric version. Added to that, it has a new “sparkling design” that is sure to win over a few more hearts. What Car? With a 1.2-litre turbo-petrol engine with two power outputs, a 1.5-litre diesel and the Mokka-e now on offer, there should be a Mokka for everyone. The car is better balanced on the road than before, but while comfortable on motorways, the soft suspension means it rocks you around in your seat a fair bit in urban settings. The amount…

HSBC: split personality Noel Quinn has had an “unenviable” first year as CEO of HSBC, said Kalyeena Makortoff in The Observer. After signalling at least 35,000 job cuts, and attempting to steer through “a geopolitical storm” in Hong Kong, he has now presided over a “second straight year of declining annual profits”. The London-based banking giant posted a 33.8% decline in pre-tax profits to $8.8bn in 2020, largely due to the impact of Covid. Shareholders may be heartened that HSBC has resumed its dividend for the first time since 2019. But issues relating to China and Hong Kong – where HSBC makes most of its cash – just won’t go away, said Lucy Burton in The Sunday Telegraph. Though Quinn insists that the bank remains committed to the UK,…

An Aussie strike against corporatism Oliver Shah The Sunday Times For years, we thought of banks as the “pantomime villains” of the business world, says Oliver Shah. But Facebook’s “unfriending” of an entire country – Australia (see page 17) – shows that “the insidious control of data” poses a greater long-term threat than any number of banking misdemeanours. “Even at their worst, banks could be brought to heel” and, if needed, “nationalised by governments”. But Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google have become “supranational monsters, picking and choosing how they behave and where they pay tax”. Capitalism is a force for good: spurring innovation, creating choice and lowering prices. But “left to run amok”, it turns into “corporatism”, enabling “bloated behemoths” to use their scale to crush newcomers. All these US…

Leominster, in Herefordshire, is an ancient town where past and present are jumbled together like coins in a purse. Shops housed in half-timbered Tudor buildings face the main square. A well-preserved ducking stool, last employed in 1809, is now on display inside the 13th century Priory Church. Christianity has even older roots here: a monastery was established around 660 by the Saxon leader Merewalh, thought to have been a son of Penda, the King of Mercia. For much of the early Middle Ages, Mercia was the most powerful of the four main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, which unified in the 10th century to become the Kingdom of England. Although the region is no longer known as Mercia, its legacy is preserved in the name of the local West Mercia Police. On 2…