Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1335 i The Week

What happened The Cornwall summit A huge security operation was under way this week in preparation for the G7 summit at the Carbis Bay resort in Cornwall. The three-day meeting, which is due to end on Sunday, is the first face-to-face gathering of world leaders since the start of the pandemic. The G7 club of what used to be the world’s seven largest economies includes the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Japan and Italy; Australia, India, South Korea and South Africa will attend as guests. The gathering was billed as a chance for Boris Johnson to showcase post-Brexit “Global Britain”, and to inject new purpose into the G7. Climate change will feature prominently on the agenda, and the PM called for G7 leaders to ensure the whole world is…

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who announced the birth of their second child, a girl named Lilibet Diana. Lilibet was the Queen’s childhood nickname. Some interpreted the couple’s decision to adopt it for their daughter as a cynical attempt to cement their royal “brand”, while others saw it as an olive branch to the family. The Sussexes, who insist they had the Queen’s blessing, have indicated that their daughter will be known as Lili. Michaela Coel, who won two coveted Baftas for her acclaimed TV drama I May Destroy You: best actress, and best mini-series. She dedicated the former award to the show’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, and the latter to its crew.…

50% of the UK’s adults think the “no platforming” at universities of speakers with controversial views is the wrong response. 17% believe it is the correct response; and 24% don’t have a view. However, while 60% of over-55s oppose the practice, the proportion falls to 32% among 16- to 24-year-olds. 53% of people say universities should expose students to a wide variety of viewpoints. Ipsos Mori/The Times 65% of Britons say they are worried about proposals to scrap the “1m-plus” social distancing rule on 21 June. 63% would be worried if the rule on wearing masks was scrapped; 60% are worried about allowing unlimited numbers into concert venues, theatres and stadiums. Savanta ComRes/The Independent…

Greenville, North Carolina He’s back: Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail this week, with an address to a Republican convention in North Carolina. In his 90-minute speech, he reiterated his claim that the 2020 election had been stolen, describing it as “the crime of the century”, attacked various Biden administration policies, claimed credit for the Covid vaccine, and alleged that the infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci had been “wrong on almost every issue”. To the delight of his 1,200-strong audience, he demanded that China pay $10trn in reparations for its role in the pandemic, and called for critical race theory to be banned in schools. Although he has yet to declare whether or not he will make another White House run, he dropped a hint, saying “our movement…

“Politicians are obsessed with the centre ground, occupied, they believe, by average voters in swing seats. Actually, centrist voters barely exist. The archetypal swing voter in England is someone who wants to revoke the citizenship of Isis recruit Shamima Begum (like 78% of the public) but is also deeply concerned by climate change. Their left-wing economic views may or may not prevail over their social conservatism. Normal people (30% of whom pay no attention to politics) don’t hold cascading views, where one view predicts the other 30, like a reverse manifesto. Most voters don’t give a fig for the political divides constructed and discussed by pundits.” James Kanagasooriam in The Times…

Our society has become too clever by half James Marriott The Times Intelligence is an admirable human quality, says James Marriott, but I can’t help feeling our society sets far too much store by it. We aspire to it; we measure people’s worth by it; we forget there are many other qualities worth admiring. Courage, manual dexterity, social skills, creativity, practical knowledge: these too were once held in high esteem. Yet now all good jobs require an academic degree. Why? Degrees “were never meant to be mere professional qualifications”. I love the fact that English undergraduates like me could spend a term in Oxford studying 17th century sermons, but “I hesitate to assert it buys me the right to feelings of moral or intellectual superiority”. The analytic type of intelligence…

Space junk strikes the ISS The International Space Station (ISS) has been hit by space debris, causing damage to one of its robotic arms. A small hole was discovered last month during a routine inspection of the ISS’s exterior: engineers don’t know when the collision occurred or what kind of object caused it. While the strike hasn’t affected the functioning of the 57.7ft-long robotic arm – used for maintenance and to seize capsules carrying supplies – the incident has raised serious concerns. There are millions of items of debris orbiting Earth, and with more craft entering space each year, the volume of “space junk” is set to increase. While Nasa tracks around 27,000 of the larger objects, it is unable to monitor anything smaller than a croquet ball, and there…

Brendan Bracken, the Tory businessman who was Winston Churchill’s wartime minister of information, established a bogus summer school in the 1950s, where he posed as a naughty 16-year-old so that he could be caned by its prefects, according to a new book. Bracken was 54 when he set up the school in Scotland. Dressed in shorts, he claimed to be a teenager named “Mike” with a premature ageing condition. Mike was often caught smoking and drinking – and so had to be punished. Among the teenagers recruited to cane him was David Campbell (pictured, with Bracken). In his memoir, he says that Bracken never touched the boys in a sexual manner – though there was “an element of masochism” involved. Bracken’s cover was finally blown in 1957, when a new…

The timing could hardly have been worse for Boris Johnson, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. Just as the Prime Minister was gearing up to host this week’s G7 summit in Cornwall, he faced a backbench rebellion that drew “further attention to the fact that Britain is slashing its support for developing countries when the rest of the G7 are sustaining or increasing their aid budgets”. Critics from all sides of the Tory party have lined up to denounce the decision to cut aid spending this year from 0.7% of Gross National Income to 0.5%. Every living former PM has condemned the move, which breaks the Tories’ manifesto pledge to stick to the UN aid spending target. Johnson escaped a likely defeat on the issue on Monday when the Commons…

Cricket: England’s refusal to gamble on victory Joe Root announced at the start of this summer that he wanted England to win all seven of their Tests, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. “It didn’t look like that” at Lord’s on Sunday. Root’s men had a great chance to get their two-match series against New Zealand off to a winning start. And what did they do? They “turned their noses up” at it. The visitors had dominated the early part of the match, but having lost a day to rain, they were running out of time to press for victory. And so their captain, Kane Williamson, left a “carrot dangling in the air” by declaring their second innings with 75 overs remaining, leaving England needing 273 runs to win.…

Artistry in statuary To The Guardian It is perhaps a little ironic that a professor of public history at the University of Manchester should dismiss, and in the Guardian moreover, the sculptor John Cassidy’s now notorious statue of Edward Colston as a “mediocre piece of late-Victorian public art”. Cassidy (1860-1939) was a Mancunian sculptor, whose Victoria Jubilee Fountain adorns Albert Square and whose masterpiece, the allegorical group Adrift, is a prominent feature of St Peter’s Square. It represents, he wrote, “the dependence of human beings upon one another, the response of human sympathy to human needs”. Cassidy was associated with the New Sculpture movement in the 1880s and 1890s, which reflected particularly the influence of Rodin. In its imagery, Adrift also looks back to Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa.…

The Answer to Everything by Luke Kennard 4th Estate 416pp £14.99 The Week Bookshop £11.99 Luke Kennard writes about the middle class, said Barney Norris in The Guardian: “flat whites, home ownership, therapists, teachers”. His first novel, The Transition, was a satire on Britain’s housing crisis. In his second, Emily and Steven, a couple with two young sons, are priced out of London’s property market and move to a vaguely “alternative” suburban community, named the Criterion, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. There, Emily becomes emotionally involved with a glamorous neighbour called Elliott. The resulting novel is “very funny”, and “abounds in pithy, wry observations”. Although ostensibly about adultery, this novel features little sex, said Jake Kerridge in The Daily Telegraph: Emily and Elliott are too tied up in…

Jazzer tells Ed he’s ready to give up shearing – he’ll need his days off once he starts at Berrow. At Beechwood, Helen invites Joy over for drinks. As Joy and Lee gossip, he asks to be added to the neighbours’ WhatsApp group – Joy seems unsure about it. Mia is on a mission to stop plastic waste and asks for Ruairi’s help; Emma can see Mia has a crush, and warns her Ruairi may not feel the same. Overhearing a call, Ian tells Adam he thinks Ruairi might be gay. Over dinner, they indicate they’ll be there for him coming out – Ruairi assures them he’s out and he’s bisexual, but is touched by their support. Jazzer and Tracy go on an ill-fated date on the motorbike. Ruairi shows…

RIP, Good Food Guide For 70 years, the Good Food Guide has been the “gourmet’s bible”, providing trusty advice to the British public about which restaurants are worth visiting, said Harriet Sherwood in The Observer. Not any more. Waitrose, its owner since 2013, has “quietly announced” it won’t be releasing a guide this year, and that it has “no plans” for future editions. The guide was launched in 1951 by the journalist Raymond Postgate, who’d begun soliciting reader reviews for a magazine column about British food. Unlike the 100% inspector-written Michelin Guide, The Good Food Guide has always been part-written by readers. Many are mourning its passing, said William Sitwell in The Daily Telegraph: my fellow critic Jay Rayner described it as a “campaign for a better life in postwar…

The Daily Telegraph Pickup trucks like the Isuzu D-Max have never been popular in the UK, where the van is king. But since HMRC views them as commercial vehicles, they come with tax perks. “So should you consider one instead of an SUV?” The four-wheel-drive D-Max can tow up to 3.5 tonnes, and lives up to its “tough, no-nonsense” reputation. But there’s no denying it is “unrefined” next to a passenger car. What Car? The D-Max comes in layouts to suit everyone – from a single cab with a long bed, to an extended cab, or a family five-seater that doubles as a work truck. It’s also fairly well-equipped and comfortable inside, with good safety tech, a 7-9in infotainment system and both Apple and Android smartphone mirroring. It may not…

A well-known destination for second-hand designer clothes, Vestiaire Collective has some 4,000 styles of wedding dress on offer, and each item is independently authenticated (vestiairecollective.com). Brides Do Good wants to make weddings more sustainable, so dresses are donated by either brides or by designers to be sold at slashed prices (bridesdogood.com). If the number of dresses online overwhelms you, try The Loop, where there’s a carefully curated collection of dresses by designers like Valentino (the-loop.uk). If you don’t want to miss out on the experience of picking out a dress in a bridal boutique, try Bridal Reloved, which has stores across the UK (bridalreloved.co.uk). Still White has more than 50,000 secondhand or ex-display wedding dresses on sale from around the world (stillwhite.com). Also look at big second-hand marketplaces like eBay,…

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, was reported to be seeking an exemption for the City’s financial services companies from the global corporation tax overhaul – on grounds that they already pay a fair share. The new tax regime is considered to be a significant deterrent to global banks operating out of London, possibly compounding the impact of Brexit, which has led to a shift of some financial trading to Amsterdam. The UK reached a new trade deal with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein that will cut tariffs on cheese, pork and poultry. The US Senate approved a massive spending plan to boost technology research and production to counter competition from China. Bitcoin suffered again after Tesla tycoon Elon Musk hinted he had fallen out of love with the cryptocurrency. The price later…

● Liking lithium Global lithium demand is expected “to at least treble” this decade as the world switches to electric vehicles, said Emily Gosden in The Times – the metal is a key ingredient in batteries. Most lithium is mined in Australia and South America, but hopes of producing “home-grown supplies” to fuel Britain’s planned “gigafactories” are focused on Cornwall, where companies such as Cornish Lithium and rival British Lithium are aiming to transform the county’s defunct mining industry into something more than a tourist attraction. Investors seem to like the story. Cornish Lithium’s “oversubscribed” crowdfunding campaign in October raised more than £5m, valuing the firm (which reported a £4m loss last year) at £40m. Another is planned – with a proposed IPO next year. ● Cornish “gold rush” The…

Jeff Bezos “Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of travelling to space,” wrote the Amazon founder on Instagram this week. Blast off is now scheduled for 20 July. Jeff Bezos, 57, and his brother Mark will be on board the maiden flight of his space tourism company, Blue Origin – an 11-minute trip to suborbital space, reaching an altitude of about 100km. If you have a few quid spare, you might join him: a seat on its New Shepard rocket is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The launch coincides with Bezos’s departure as chief executive of Amazon. “If all goes to plan,” said The Economist, “he will beat two other billionaires” with rival ventures, Elon Musk and Richard Branson, into space. Not a bad way…

Controversy of the week The crisis in schools “Fidgety children who sulk, cannot share, shout and throw tantrums and hissy fits.” That’s what teachers at Westminster Primary, a fairly typical primary school in Blackpool, had to cope with when pupils returned after months of Covid-related disruption, said Sian Griffiths in The Sunday Times. The younger ones had to re-learn “how to sit at a desk”; the older ones had “forgotten basic facts and times tables”. On average, children in England lost 115 days of schooling during the pandemic – something Kevan Collins, the education recovery tsar, aimed to redress with his catch-up plan. He proposed extending the school day by half an hour, and providing extra tutoring to disadvantaged children. Only weeks ago, No. 10 had claimed that catch-up classes…

Jeff Bezos, whose tax records were leaked online, along with those of several other billionaires. They suggest that the Amazon CEO paid no federal income tax at all in 2007 or in 2011, when he actually claimed a tax credit of $4,000 for his children. Tesla founder Elon Musk paid no personal tax in 2018, while for several years investor Warren Buffett paid tax at a rate of 0.1%. Internet users, after large chunks of the web went dark for a few hours on Tuesday, owing to a software glitch at Fastly – a cloud computing firm in San Francisco. Amazon, and the UK Government website, were among those affected (see page 41). The Ministry of Defence, with reports that its new Ajax tanks can’t be driven faster than 20mph;…

Glasgow Campaigner charged: The case of a feminist activist who has been charged with a hate crime, for posting allegedly homophobic and transphobic comments on social media, has sparked fierce debate in Scotland about free speech and transgender rights. Marion Millar is a businesswoman and member of For Women Scotland, a group formed in response to fears that reforms to the Gender Recognition Act could erode sex-based rights. An appeal to help pay her legal fees raised £30,000, before it was shut down by the GoFundMe site for violating its terms of service. Newcastle Outdoor smoking bans: Five local authorities have banned smoking on pavements outside pubs, restaurants and cafés, as part of a Government drive to make England smoke-free by 2030. The bans, in Newcastle, Northumberland, Durham, North Tyneside…

Hollywood comes to Wales Rob McElhenney isn’t a typical non-league football club owner. But when the US actor, best known for his role in the hit comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, watched a documentary about Sunderland AFC and its role in the city’s community, it “struck a chord” with him; something “clicked”. “I remember very distinctly sitting on the couch with Kaitlin [Olson, his wife], and I turned to her and I said, ‘I’m going to buy a football club’,” he told Ben Allen in GQ. Before long, he’d talked the Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds into joining him as co-investor; and the pair settled on Wrexham AFC. The club – the third oldest in the world – has been out of the Football League since 2008, and fan-owned since…

A Danish radio journalist has taken immersive journalism to new heights, by recording an interview while having sex at a swingers’ club. Louise Fischer, 26, who works for Radio 4 on Denmark’s national radio, was sent to cover the reopening of Swingland in Ishøj, near Copenhagen, after Covid restrictions were eased. She recorded a two-minute segment in which she can be heard having sex while interviewing a club guest. “For me, it’s very natural,” Fischer explained. “It is part of my job to give an insight into a world that not everyone has access to.” A runaway monkey was found last week at a train station near Glasgow. The animal was discovered at Cambuslang tation, prompting an appeal from ScotRail. “If you’ve lost your monkey,” the operator tweeted, “it’s waiting…

Whether it’s English people saying “tomayto” when talking to Americans, or Steve McClaren’s infamous “fake” Dutch accent, humans have a tendency to adapt their speech in the presence of foreigners. A study has now revealed that one species of primate does the same. Scientists looked at two monkey species in Brazil: red-handed tamarins and the critically endangered pied tamarin. Both communicate using high-pitched whistles, but while the pied tamarin’s call is pitched within a narrow bandwidth, the red-handed tamarin’s spans a wider frequency range. The team analysed the monkeys’ calls in different areas, and found that in places where their territories overlapped, the red-handed tamarin emitted a whistle close to the pied tamarin’s. “It’s like an accent because they’re giving the same message, but saying it in a slightly different…

Two months ago, the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps assured us that the Government would produce a “watchlist” of countries at risk of moving from green to amber on its new traffic light system, to give holidaymakers and tour operators “more certainty”, said Simon Calder in The Independent. But last week, anyone who’d been gullible enough to book a trip to Portugal – the only mainstream destination on the green list – was given just 108 hours to get home, if they wanted to avoid quarantine and the need for more costly PCR tests. The result? Travellers forced to shell out vast sums for new tickets; airports so crowded distancing was impossible; and billions knocked off the value of airlines and tour operators. Shapps cited concerns about the emergence of what…

Stonewall, Britain’s largest LGBT charity, is in deep trouble, said Josephine Bartosch in The Daily Telegraph. For many years it has run a Diversity Champions programme: more than 850 organisations, from Amazon to the NHS to MI6, pay annual fees to ensure that their policies are LGBT inclusive. But now many of its customers, including the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Channel 4, are leaving. Why? Because of its extreme stance on gender identity. Stonewall supports the view that people ought to be able to self-identify as the gender they choose. And it regards those who disagree with that – including feminists who oppose, say, biological men competing as women in sports competitions, or entering women’s refuges – as “transphobic”. A damning recent report found that Stonewall had given…

It was both an extraordinary feat and an all too common occurrence in modern athletics, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. At the FBK Games in Holland last weekend, yet another middle-distance track record was “obliterated”. Sifan Hassan, an Ethiopian-born Dutch athlete, and already the holder of three road world records, ran the 10,000 metres in 29:06:82, shaving an incredible ten seconds and more off the previous record (and 30 seconds off her own personal best). The one thing that took no one by surprise, however, was the shoes Hassan had on her feet. She “appeared to be wearing the latest version of the Nike ZoomX Dragonfly spikes” – billed as the “fastest shoes ever”. These so-called “super-shoes” or “super-spikes” have a midsole stuffed with a lightweight, responsive foam and…

To The Times Encouraged by your leading article (“Bug’s Life”) on tracking insect decline by “splatometer”, I thought instead to investigate wasp populations by means of a Devon cream tea. On Tuesday afternoon, after several warm days, I set up in my garden a four-scone cream tea topped with copious quantities of strawberry jam. My expectation, from past experience, is that this would have attracted wasps and other flying insects. But on this occasion, there were none of either, which I find disturbing. In the interest of science, I am steeling myself to repeat this exercise at frequent intervals throughout the summer months. Brian Parker, Dartmouth, Devon To The Times It is not surprising that Brian Parker’s cream tea experiment failed to attract any wasps. They are carnivorous, and during…

Anne Boleyn arrived on Channel 5 “with much culture-war chatter” about the casting of a black actress, Jodie Turner-Smith, in the title role, said Ben Dowell in The Times. But as it turns out, this “bold decision” was one of the few things about the drama that works, bringing Anne’s outsider status, and growing isolation, into “sharper focus”. The rest of it is marred by too much exposition, “heavy-handed symbolism” – and visuals that looked rushed and a bit cheap. Turner-Smith (known for her role in the hit film Queen & Slim) gives Anne “a mesmerising hauteur”, said Euan Ferguson in The Observer. And relative to many period dramas, the series is not bad. But it suffers by comparison with the masterpiece that was Wolf Hall. Don’t blame its stars,…

The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge, 1991 (Abacus £9.99). I am obsessed with Antarctica and went on an expedition there 20 years ago. This haunting novel is about Scott’s ill-fated 1912 trip, and uncovers the arrogance of these upper-class male explorers, but also paints a beautiful picture of an untouched land and the human endurance needed to conquer it. The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr, 1968 (HarperCollins £6.99). I have four kids, so I know this one off by heart. If I can’t sleep, I just recite it in my head. But one look at the cover makes me instantly melancholy about my babies growing up. Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson by E. Jean Carroll, 1993 (Simon & Schuster, out of print).…

Programmes Grace Kelly: Lost Tapes of a Princess Using previously unseen film, this documentary looks for the real Grace Kelly. Sat 12 Jun, C4 21:00 (60mins). Dispatches: Undercover in Africa’s Secret State Reporter Evan Williams uses secret footage shot over five years to reveal the plight of Eritreans, living under one of the world’s most repressive dictatorships. Wed 16 Jun, C4 23:05 (65mins). Roberto Martínez: Whistle to Whistle As the delayed Euro 2020 gets under way, this film follows the manager of the No. 1 ranked national team – Belgium – as he prepares for the tournament. Wed 16 Jun, BBC1 23:30 (60mins). Together James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan star in this bittersweet comedy-drama about a couple forced to re-evaluate their relationship during lockdown. Thur 17 Jun, BBC2 21:00 (90mins).…

This recipe would perhaps be a last meal request for me, says Emily Scott: it contains all the ingredients that I simply love. Crab is available in most good supermarkets or, even better, head to your local fishmonger. If on holiday in Cornwall, find a local fisherman to point you in the right direction. Cornish crab linguine with chilli, lemon and parsley Serves 4 300g dried linguine pasta 250g fresh white Cornish crab meat, picked over for pieces of shell 2 fresh red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped 1 bunch of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped zest and juice of 1 lemon (zest is optional) 100g parmesan, grated 150ml olive oil, for drizzling Cornish sea salt and freshly ground black pepper • Bring a pan of salted water to the boil,…

Argos Home Warm White Outdoor Tripod USB LED Solar Lamp Create the feeling of being cosy inside in your garden with this simple tripod lamp. Made of weatherproof metal and plastic, it’s easy to keep outside, and is solar-powered so doesn’t require a socket. You can also recharge it using a USB port (£50; argos.co.uk). Philips Hue White and Colour Ambiance Lily LED Smart Outdoor Stake Lights If you want to splash out, this set of three smart lights from the Philips Hue collection lets you create a huge range of colour schemes and control the lights via an app (£275; johnlewis.com). EGLO Canove Caged Exterior Wall Light More stylish than the average wall light in its geometric cage, this EGLO light is designed and made in the Austrian Tyrol…

Maverick lawyer who defended O.J. Simpson F. Lee Bailey 1933-2021 F. Lee Bailey, who has died aged 87, was a controversial American lawyer best known for helping O.J. Simpson escape a murder conviction in 1995. As a member of Simpson’s “dream team” of attorneys, Bailey suggested to the jury that a crucial piece of evidence – a blood-stained glove – had been planted by a racist cop to frame the former professional footballer for the stabbing of Nicole Brown, his ex-wife, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Although this was never substantiated, it was seen as a pivotal moment in the trial, said The Times. Simpson later lost a wrongful death civil suit related to the killings, and was ordered to pay $33.5m in damages; but Bailey always insisted on his…

“The fashion resale market has exploded over the past decade,” said Marc Bain on Quartz. The global market is now worth between $30-$40bn, according to Boston Consulting, and is growing exponentially. The latest to grab onto its coattails is Etsy, the US e-commerce group dedicated to indie crafters and collectors, which is paying a sizeable $1.6bn to acquire the London-based vintage fashion app, Depop. Clearly when it comes to fashion, “the new thing is older stuff”, said Chris Nuttall on FT.com. But demographics are also vital to this deal. More than 90% of Depop’s users are under 26 – enabling Etsy to tap into the Generation Z age bracket below its current, mainly millennial, customer-base. Founded by Simon Beckerman in 2011, Depop has grown rapidly, particularly in the US and…

Domestic holiday groups Almost immediately after the Government cut the number of “green list” countries last week, UK travel and leisure companies reported “white hot” demand, said the FT. Rental company Awaze reported a 40% jump on bookings compared with the same day in 2019; Butlin’s, Parkdean Resorts and Away Resorts boasted similar surges. Some holiday lets are up by as much as 50%. Train companies The booking site Trainline reported that bookings for domestic open returns jumped 86% on the day of the announcement – though the news had little effect on its own share price, which was whacked by the Government’s recent rail overhaul. High streets Figures from the retail data firm Springboard showed a near 12% rise in high street visits last week, thanks to half term…

The week’s best shares Bloomsbury Publishing The Times Revenues are up 14%, profits by 31% and dividends are back, thanks to the publisher’s bestselling fantasy fiction, non-fiction and cookery books. It is currently expanding its academic and professional division. Buy. 344p. Electrocomponents Investors Chronicle This electrical products distributor services sectors from healthcare to mining in 80 countries. Bolstering its digital position and growing its own brand offering to boost margins, with firepower for acquisitions. Buy. £10.15. Gooch & Housego Investors Chronicle The photonics specialist has seen increased demand for lasers used in semiconductor and microelectronics manufacturing, medical optics and ventilators. Expanding its life sciences arm. Buy. £13.44. LondonMetric Property Investors Chronicle This real estate investment trust (Reit) focuses primarily on the logistics sector, with distribution assets accounting for 75% of…

Cannabis shops in Washington State have been doing their bit to improve vaccine take-up, by offering “Joints for Jabs”. The offer, of a single joint to anyone over 21 who gets a Covid-19 jab on-site, has been approved by the local drug and alcohol licensing board. In other states, people have offered free beer and baseball tickets in exchange for being jabbed. Major firms are jazzing up their offices, in an effort to lure back reluctant workers. According to architecture firm LOM, a host of big firms, including Microsoft and Santander, have hired it to design post-pandemic offices with fewer desks, and more relaxation and fitness areas featuring ping pong tables, gym equipment, yoga studios, bars and garden spaces.…

Nearly 600 migrants tried to cross the English Channel over just three days last week, as good weather brought calm seas. So far this year, 3,500 people have reached the UK via this route, more than twice as many as by the same point in 2020. Home Secretary Priti Patel said the UK public was “absolutely fed up” about the numbers. Government figures show that 1,503 people who arrived in the first three months of 2021 have had their asylum claims deemed “inadmissible”. Home Office policy is to remove such people to any “safe” European country they passed through en route to Britain, but it is not clear how this can be done, as no European country has agreed a deal to take back migrants.…

The Hague No reprieve for Mladic: The former military commander of the Bosnian Serbs, Ratko Mladic, has failed in his bid to have his conviction for genocide overturned. Mladic, 78, led Bosnian Serb forces in Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, and was responsible for terrorising the civilian population of Sarajevo during a 43-month siege, and the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995. He was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by a special UN court in 2017. Mladic’s appeal lawyers argued that he could not be held responsible for crimes carried out by his subordinates, but the appeal was dismissed in its entirety. He will remain in prison for life. Limburg, Belgium Manhunt: The Belgian authorities have stepped up their search for a…

1* Caroline by Francis Rossi and Bob Young, performed live by Status Quo 2 Climb Ev’ry Mountain by Rodgers and Hammerstein, performed by Peggy Wood 3 Wing Commander Hancock by Alan Simpson and Ray Galton, performed by Tony Hancock and Kenneth Williams 4 Invisible Touch by Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins and Tony Banks, performed by Genesis 5 The Best by Mike Chapman and Holly Knight, performed by Tina Turner 6 I Heard It Through the Grapevine by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, performed by Marvin Gaye 7 Dear Lord and Father of Mankind from The Brewing of Soma by John Greenleaf Whittier, performed by Temple Church Choir 8 Vissi d’Arte by Giacomo Puccini for Tosca, performed by Maria Callas and the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala Book: Inspector Morse Mysteries…

In a matter of months, China’s Mars mission, Tianwen (meaning “Heavenly Questions”), has completed a stunning trio of achievements: it entered orbit in February, landed on the surface of the red planet (at Utopia Planitia) on 14 May and, a few days later, sent its Zhurong rover (named after a Chinese god of fire) trundling onto the rocky ground. Getting to Mars is hard, but landing is much harder: Nasa calls the descent through its super-thin atmosphere the “seven minutes of terror”. The Soviet Union landed a craft on Mars in 1971, but it stopped communicating shortly after it reached the surface. Only the US had previously managed successful Mars landings – the most recent being the Perseverance rover in February. Zhurong weighs in at around 240kg, a quarter of…

Can’t get the staff? There’s no mystery to it Helaine Olen The Washington Post America is suffering from a drastic shortage of workers, says Helaine Olen. Employers in a range of industries complain that they just can’t find enough staff. The problem, some say, is that too many idle people are enjoying sitting at home on extended unemployment benefits. But if many Americans are reluctant to go back to work, it probably has more to do with the fact that they’re fed up with their employment terms. And who can blame them? Millions of Americans earn less than a living wage. Many staff in the restaurant business still receive the federal minimum wage for tipped jobs, of just $2.13 an hour. US employees, unlike those in other rich nations, enjoy…

More than 200 deaths occur in Britain each year because of heatwaves caused by man-made global warming, scientists have claimed. The study – the largest to date looking at the health risks posed by rising heat exposure – analysed data on death rates and temperatures in 43 countries over the 27 years to 2018. Using modelling, the team calculated what proportion of heat-related deaths had been caused by human emissions – and found that it was 35% in the UK (compared with a global average of 37%). From this, the scientists estimated that anthropogenic climate change had led to nearly 6,000 extra deaths in the UK over the past three decades. The message was clear, said senior author Prof Antonio Gasparrini, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine:…

Last week, the two billionth Covid-19 shot was administered, said The Economist. Around one-quarter of the world’s adults have now received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine – a “remarkable achievement”, given that 18 months ago, this coronavirus was “unknown to humankind”. However, since most vaccines require two doses, about 13 billion more jabs are still required. Of the two billion so far, nearly 40% have been in the US and Europe; and less than 1% in sub-Saharan Africa. This gulf is creating a “two-track pandemic”, said The Guardian. Rich countries must do “whatever it takes” to roll out the vaccines across the world. The case for global solidarity is “pragmatic”. The Delta variant, which originated in India, “will not be the last to emerge, as long as…

“The real hell of life is that everyone has their reasons.” Director Jean Renoir, quoted in The New Republic “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Milan Kundera, quoted in The Times “Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn’t any.” Edith Wharton, quoted on The Browser “Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.” Historian Lewis Mumford, quoted in Country Living “At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted in Forbes “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” John Steinbeck, quoted in the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber “All…

Tennis Serena Williams lost in straight sets in the fourth round of the French Open to Kazakh player Elena Rybakina. Football England secured two 1-0 victories in their last warm-up games for the Euros, against Austria and Romania. A thigh injury suffered by Trent Alexander-Arnold in the first match means he will miss the tournament. F1 Lewis Hamilton made a rare error on the penultimate lap in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix – he accidentally pressed a button in his cockpit that affected the brakes. The error caused Hamilton to drop from 2nd to 15th place.…

A few notable filmmakers have put fictionalised versions of their own childhoods on screen. Truffaut’s The 400 Blows is a classic example; here are five others: My Childhood Winner of the Silver Lion at Venice in 1972, Bill Douglas’s account of his harsh childhood in a Scottish mining village in the 1940s is the first part of a trilogy. Its stark style influenced directors such as Terence Davies, whose excellent films about his own life include The Long Day Closes. Amarcord Fellini’s 1973 Oscar winner is his most accessible film, a joyous account of a single year in the Italian seaside town of Rimini in the 1930s, where he grew up. Sometimes satirising the Mussolini regime, it is bawdy and uproariously funny, but shot through with images of almost mystical…

Few figures in history are quite as notorious as the first century Roman emperor Nero, said Farah Nayeri in The New York Times. “The charge sheet against him is long and familiar”: Nero is seen as the “prototypical tyrant”, a “bloodthirsty pyromaniac” who murdered his half-brother, two of his wives and his mother – with whom he also conducted an “incestuous relationship”. He supposedly revelled in excess, slaughtered Christians by the hundreds, and infamously played music as Rome burned; it was even rumoured that he himself had started the fire in order to pave the way for a gargantuan new palace. Yet this new exhibition at the British Museum argues that most of what we think we know about Nero is wrong. Far from being a sadistic tyrant, the curators…

Burgundy is the spiritual home of pinot noir, said Susy Atkins in The Daily Telegraph, but what is the next best region for this “notoriously difficult and pernickety” grape? While New Zealand and California both produce excellent pinots, I’ve recently been “bowled over” by the wines from somewhere much more site specific: the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. This small hook of land, 40 miles southeast of Melbourne, is surrounded by three bodies of water. That is the key to its success with pinot: the cool breezes coming off the sea “fan the peninsula, moderating the heat”. Its wines aren’t cheap – top pinot never is – but they’re “well worth it for a treat”. My favourites? Stonier Pinot Noir 2018 (£22.99, or £18.99 in a Mix Six; Majestic) is…

According to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the “tone” of our emails is misinterpreted 50% of the time. So what are the online communication rules? ● If in doubt, assume that others mean well – remember we’re not all “digital natives”. ● Avoid awkward interruptions on video calls by using the “hand raise” feature. ● Avoid rushed abbreviations, like thx or TY, and open-ended questions – “Thoughts?” ● Don’t issue calendar invites for early tomorrow with no explanation, because people may think they are being fired. ● Full stops can be used without seeming angry in emails, but in texts they are still often seen as aggressive. ● Give context. Don’t use vague stress-inducing subject lines like “Please call me”. ● Try to mirror your boss’s digital body…

Fastly: fame at last “Fastly’s content delivery network is all about control and reliability,” runs the blurb on the cloud company’s website. Not always, it seems, said CNN Business. The “massive internet outage” – which saw websites and apps around the world “go dark” for about an hour on Tuesday – has been attributed to “a widespread failure” of Fastly’s systems. The outage, ascribed to a faulty “configuration”, affected dozens of countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia. Both the White House and the British Government’s Gov.uk sites went down, as did Amazon, eBay, Reddit, CNN and several newspapers. PayPal, Twitch and Twitter also reported problems. Initial estimates by the UK delivery company ParcelHero put the likely cost of the hour-long collapse for retailers at around $1bn, said Louise…

Britain’s red hot recovery Merryn Somerset Webb Financial Times Holidaying in Cornwall last week, it was all but impossible to get a dinner reservation after 5pm, says Merryn Somerset Webb. The cost of everything prompted one New York friend to gasp: “Hamptons prices!” Welcome to “Britain’s stunning V-shaped recovery”: 16 months of pent-up demand has been released directly into the country’s bars and beaches. You can see it in the data – the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), at 62.9, is at “its highest ever level”, boosted by a services boom. This, as the OECD notes, is “no ordinary recovery”. You would hardly expect it to be following such “an extraordinary Keynesian experiment”. The National Audit Office now puts government support at £372bn, or around 16% of GDP. Households, meanwhile, have…