Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1341 i The Week

What happened England’s “pingdemic” The arrival of “Freedom Day” in England this week was overshadowed by concerns about rising infections and confusion over self-isolation requirements. Until 16 August, anyone “pinged” by the NHS Covid app – alerted they have been in close contact with a person with Covid – is meant to self-isolate for ten days. Critics have warned that this is crippling the economy. Around half a million people in England were pinged last week, and more than a million children were off school. Boris Johnson insisted it was still “essential” for people to continue isolating, but said a small number of critical workers would be exempted from the rule. The PM is isolating in Chequers after coming into contact with Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who has contracted Covid.…

Sue Perkins, who will be the new host of Just a Minute. Her appointment follows the death of Nicholas Parsons, who hosted the show for more than 50 years from its first broadcast in 1967. British accents, which are spreading fast through the US, thanks to the popularity of Peppa Pig. The “Peppa effect” has taken hold during lockdown, according to parents in America and Canada, who claim their children are talking in funny accents, and saying “to-mah-to” instead of “to-may-to”. “She says ‘lovely’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ all the time,” said one baffled parent. Prince Harry, who has agreed a publishing deal to write his memoirs. His “literary memoir” is expected late in 2022, and will be written, he said, “not as the prince I was born, but…

The number of migrants to have crossed the Channel this year reached 8,474 this week, surpassing the figure for the whole of 2020. On Monday alone, at least 430 people reached the UK in small boats, a new daily record. In an attempt to curb numbers, Home Secretary Priti Patel agreed to pay France an extra £54m to step up police patrols along the French shore. Patel has pledged to clamp down on crossings, and under the Nationality and Borders Bill now going through Parliament, anyone arriving in Britain illegally could face a jail term of up to four years.…

Fremont National Forest, Oregon Wildfires rage: More than 2,000 firefighters were attempting to quell a gigantic wildfire in southern Oregon this week, as large parts of the western United States and Canada continued to endure a record-breaking heatwave and high winds that have sparked fires across the region. Oregon’s “Bootleg Fire”, which has burned more than 550 square miles of forest and grassland since it began on 6 July, is now so large that it covers an area the size of Los Angeles, and is generating its own weather in the form of dangerous lightning clouds. It’s one of more than 80 major fires raging across 13 US states, while western Canada has also been badly affected, with more than 150 new fires breaking out last weekend alone. It takes…

“No doubt, great torrents of cant and quackery wash through Facebook and Twitter. [But there is] a harder-to-discuss problem. This is human credulity: the demand for nonsense, not the supply of it. Anyone prone to mistrusting a vaccine, or an election result, will hunt out corroborating news. If Facebook provides it, so too do talk radio, cable television and word of mouth. At some point, the instrument of misinformation becomes less troubling than the underlying receptiveness to it. Social media users are discussed as if they were passive victims of demonic possession. The implication, that they would be model citizens were it not for the apps, slips by unquestioned.” Janan Ganesh in the FT…

The tide of sewage on our coasts George Monbiot The Guardian Southern Water was fined a record £90m this month, for pouring billions of litres of raw sewage into the sea off Hampshire and Kent. But the most surprising thing, says George Monbiot, is not so much the deed itself as the fact that the water company was actually prosecuted. These firms so seldom are. They’re only allowed to release sewage when “exceptional rainfall” overwhelms their works, yet in practice “the crap keeps coming”, rain or shine. Court documents show that Southern Water chose to pump filth into our coastal waters after calculating that even a big fine would be cheaper than upgrading its plants and treating the sewage. It also thought its chances of being caught were slim. Since…

Fading hope of life on Venus The unexpected discovery of a gas called phosphine on Venus last year “led to speculation that there may be life floating in the planet’s clouds”, said Leah Crane in New Scientist. But now it seems that the gas may have come from “huge volcanic eruptions” instead. In 2020, a team from Cardiff University found evidence of phosphine in the atmosphere of our sister planet. On Earth, life is the only process known to produce the gas in large quantities. While the surface of Venus is a hellscape hot enough to melt lead, it is possible that organisms could live in the cooler upper layers of the atmosphere. However, researchers at Cornell University in New York have now calculated that volcanic activity could also explain…

Boris Johnson had to be talked out of going to see the Queen early on in the pandemic, according to Dominic Cummings. The PM’s former chief adviser claims his boss was about to attend his weekly audience at Buckingham Palace after Covid had hit No. 10. “I said, ‘What on earth are you talking about, you can’t go and see the Queen’,” he told the BBC. Johnson replied: “Ah, that’s what I do every Wednesday, sod this, I’m gonna go and see her.” The PM “just hadn’t thought it through”, said Cummings. When it was pointed out he could kill the Queen, “He said, ‘Yeah, holy shit, I can’t go’.” President Biden has a new rhetorical trick: leaning into the microphone at important moments, pausing, and whispering theatrically. In Wisconsin…

Early last week, a low-pressure system began forming over the area where Germany meets Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, said The Economist. Puffed up by heat – in the Netherlands, it had been the hottest June since 1901– it sucked in moisture from all across central Europe. “Then it sat there for days, disgorging colossal quantities of rain.” Some regions got over 90mm of precipitation last Tuesday – much more than the average amount for a month – and a further 70mm or more the next day. “Soon entire towns were under water.” Across Germany’s northwestern states, houses, bridges and cars were swept away. Villages were destroyed. The press called it a Jahrhundertflut, a once-in-a-century flood: the worst in postwar history. Nearly 200 people died in Germany and Belgium; hundreds…

“Collin Morikawa is the first-timer who simply loves firsts, the virgin soldier who thinks nothing of being the last man standing on the battlefield,” said James Corrigan in The Daily Telegraph. When the 24-year-old American won The Open at Royal St George’s on Sunday, with a nerveless, bogey-less 66 in the final round, he became the only golfer to win two majors on a debut attempt, having already collected the US PGA last year. He was “unbreakable, unmatchable and unbelievable”. South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen had led the tournament since Friday – but when Morikawa overtook him with a birdie at the seventh, “he was doomed never to recover”. Instead the contest on the back nine was with Morikawa’s countryman Jordan Spieth, who “burst back into the reckoning” after a recent…

Cricket Liam Livingstone scored the fastest-ever century for England as he hit 103 off 42 balls in the first T20 international against Pakistan. England went on to lose the match by 31 runs. Football Peterborough United’s Amputee team defeated Portsmouth Amputees on penalties in the FA Disability Cup at St George’s Park on Sunday. Darts The former BDO world darts champion Andy Fordham died on Thursday at the age of 59. Known by his nickname The Viking, Fordham was one of the most popular figures in his sport.…

Cinema has its share of heroic fathers, but the most memorable movie dads are often its most flawed. Here are five excellent films about fatherhood: Through a Glass Darkly Ingmar Bergman’s exquisite 1961 Oscar-winner is a three-act chamber piece that depicts 24 hours in the lives of an estranged family on holiday together. Harriet Andersson’s performance as a young woman who, released from a mental institution, seeks security in the love of her father, is stark and precise. The Return Andrey Zvyagintsev’s doleful debut about an errant father, who returns after an absence of 12 years and takes his two sons fishing in the Russian wilderness, won the Golden Lion at 2003’s Venice film festival. A mysterious, unsettling and beautiful film. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou Father-son issues appear…

One of my favourite wines to drink in summer is “fresh and tangy” Picpoul de Pinet, says Susy Atkins in The Daily Telegraph. Made “near the Med”, in the Pinet sub-region of the Languedoc, it has a light, crisp and floral style, which is rare in a wine produced in such a hot climate. “The vines’ proximity to the sea breezes helps”, as does the natural acidity of the picpoul grape. Easily recognisable in shops, because of their distinctive tall green bottles, most picpouls are priced very reasonably – between £8 and £10. They make “lip-smacking” apéritifs, and are also “excellent matches for seafood and fish” and grilled vegetables like courgette and fennel. If you’re a member of the Wine Society, try their Picpoul de Pinet 2020 (£8.75), which “has…

Egypt’s first lady and campaigner for women’s rights Jehan Sadat 1933-2021 As first lady of Egypt, Jehan Sadat, who has died aged 87, braved fierce opposition from conservative Muslims to become a leading champion of women’s rights, said The Times. Before the assassination of her husband, President Anwar Sadat, in 1981, she lobbied for what became known as “Jehan’s Laws”; legislation that for the first time gave women the right to child support and custody after divorce. She also campaigned successfully to ban female genital mutilation and set up a women’s craft-making co-operative, so that wives were no longer dependent on their husbands for money. As a widow, she made a new life for herself as an academic, teaching at universities in Egypt and the US. In a rare mark…

There are no fewer than 13 inquiries into the collapse of Greensill Capital – reflecting “the sprawling nature of the business, its multiple connections with Sanjeev Gupta’s metals empire”, along with “the stink” surrounding David Cameron’s lobbying role, says Katherine Griffiths in The Times. One down, 12 to go. MPs on the Treasury Select Committee have concluded that urgent reforms of the financial system are needed to prevent a repeat: they want stricter controls on outsourcing regulation to third parties, and tighter rules governing the acquisition of banks. Let’s get on with it. “We don’t need to wait” for the other inquiries to finish “to set these changes in motion”.…

The price of commercial legal services “has grown much faster than inflation in the past year”, said Arthur Sants in Investors’ Chronicle. Good news for “one of the UK’s best performing industries”. The six listed law firms have grown their combined value by 50% in the past year. Here’s a rundown of the four main players: Keystone Law The most “unusual and entrepreneurial” firm has a decentralised model, in which all its lawyers work from home and none is paid a fixed salary, thereby reducing costs and aiding scalability. DWF Currently the only firm listed on the main exchange, the largest firm by revenue (annual sales of £339m), and the only listed firm with “a significant international presence”. Nonetheless, “potentially undervalued”. The market, though, has reservations about potentially high levels…

Controversy of the week Levelling up Britain Shortly after his 2019 election victory, Boris Johnson stood outside No. 10 and promised to “unite and level up” the nation, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. This is his “Big Idea” and he keeps returning to it. The PM has appointed the thoughtful and effective Conservative MP Neil O’Brien to develop the policy. But O’Brien has been in the post for a few weeks only, so it’s not his fault that Johnson’s landmark speech on his “defining mission” last week went down “like a cup of cold sick”. Yes, Johnson asked many of the right questions about the UK’s “gross inequalities”. How can it be right, he asked, that life expectancy is ten years lower for a man in Blackpool or Glasgow…

Liverpool, which has been stripped of its World Heritage status. A Unesco committee recommended that the city be removed from the list owing to developments on its waterfront, which had resulted in an “irreversible loss of attributes”. Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose new West End musical, Cinderella, was cancelled just hours before its first performance. Lloyd Webber said there had been only one positive case among the entire cast and crew. But under the Government’s isolation guidance, he said he could not continue the run. Ocado, after “robot wars” closed down its automated warehouse near the Thames. Three robots collided, starting a major fire.…

67% of adults under 35, but only 39% of over-55s, support building new homes on the green belt (if plans comply with government regulations to offset damage to the natural environment). Overall, 53% supported such developments. Bright Blue/The Times About one in five adults of all ages in the UK had the NHS Covid-19 app but have now deleted it from their phone. About a third of those who had it last week expressed an intention to delete it on 19 July. Savanta/ComRes 78% of Japanese people think the Tokyo Olympics should not go ahead because of Covid. Across 28 nations, 57% of people said it should be cancelled. Ipsos…

Falling from the sky Not many people have survived plummeting 10,000ft out of the air – but Juliane Diller did. It happened on Christmas Eve of 1971, when she was 17. She and her mother had taken off from Lima in Peru in a small propeller plane bound for Pucallpa. Diller’s destination was Panguana, a research station in the Amazon run by her zoologist parents. But 25 minutes into the flight, the plane was struck by lightning and broke apart: Diller fell nearly two miles into the jungle below. “From above, the treetops resembled heads of broccoli,” she told Franz Lidz in The New York Times. Her fall was cushioned by the rainforest’s dense foliage and, miraculously, she escaped with minor injuries, the worst of which was a broken collarbone.…

Have beds in the Olympic village been weakened to discourage athletes having sex at the pandemic-hit Tokyo Games? The US runner Paul Chelimo suggested that their 100% recyclable cardboard beds had been designed to hold only the weight of one person, so as to “avoid intimacy among athletes”. But the theory has been debunked by the Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan, who posted a video of himself on Twitter bouncing up and down on the beds to show they could withstand “sudden movements”. “It’s fake, fake news!”, he said. The England fan who became briefly famous for placing a lit flare up his bottom before the Euros final was tracked down by The Sun – and declared that he “regrets nothing”. “I loved it,” said Charlie Perry, 25. He said that…

ITALY Venice’s battle against the cruise ships Die Tageszeitung (Berlin) The Italian government’s decision to ban cruise ships from Venice has been greeted with applause around the world, says Petra Reski. These giant floating hotels create “small tsunamis” as they sail past St Mark’s Square, damaging the city’s foundations and the lagoon’s fragile ecosystem. For years, campaigners have pleaded with the government to take action. Now, at last, it has been forced into action by Unesco, which was about to add Venice to its blacklist of endangered world heritage sites. From next month, vessels of more than 25,000 tonnes won’t be allowed in, until the city’s industrial port, Marghera, is ready to receive them. Sadly, though, there’s precious little to celebrate. Problems will persist until big ships are barred from…

After more than 10,000 years of domestication and breeding, dogs may have lost the pack-hunting skills of wolves; but, unlike wolves, they are very good at understanding humans. “Researchers have shown that no matter how much you coddle and socialise with wolf cubs, they are never able to form the kind of inferences about humans’ behaviour that dogs can,” said Tom Whipple in The Times. A study carried out at the Wildlife Science Centre in Stacy, Minnesota, monitored 44 puppies and 37 wolf cubs to see how they responded to human instructions. The dogs were left with their mothers and siblings, while keepers spent 24 hours a day with the wolves, and fed them by hand. Even so, the wolves never formed a bond like the dogs did. In a…

“Nothing about the politics of Northern Ireland has ever been easy,” said The Times. But few questions have been more difficult than how to address “the legacy of violence during the Troubles”. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 brought peace, but it did not bring justice: around 1,200 unsolved deaths are still under investigation. And for many, the Government’s new proposal for an “effective amnesty” for those accused of crimes committed before the agreement – whether security forces or paramilitaries – will come as “a bitter blow”. In place of prosecutions, Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is backing a South African-style “truth and reconciliation” commission. All major Northern Irish parties and the Irish government strongly oppose such a move. But the truth is that the likelihood of fair trials…

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were supposed to symbolise Japan’s national revival after years in the economic doldrums, said Ido Vock in the New Statesman, but Covid-19 has put paid to that. The delayed Games beginning this week are set to be the “strangest” in history. With Tokyo in a state of emergency owing to a spike in Covid infections, the athletes will mostly compete in empty stadiums. Medal ceremonies will be muted affairs, said David Brown in The Times: winners will pick their medal from a tray and place it around their own neck. Competitors can’t mix and will have to leave the Olympic village within 48 hours of their final event. “Organisers will, as normal, hand out 160,000 condoms to the 15,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes, but this year…

“Football might not have come home,” said Jim White in The Daily Telegraph, “but Lewis Hamilton did – and how.” Hamilton won his eighth British Grand Prix with “the most determined and pugnacious drive of his career”; he equalled the record for the most wins at a single F1 event and gave his ailing championship campaign “a blast with the defibrillator” as the first lap turned his ongoing battle with Max Verstappen into something from the days of Prost vs. Senna. “It may have lasted under two minutes, but there was as much drama here as in any round of a world heavyweight title fight.” Starting from second on the grid, Hamilton tried to slide inside Verstappen at Copse Corner, “perhaps sensing a move that would have gone down in…

Racism in football To the Financial Times Sadly, why are we surprised (“Football, racism and the England team”)? John Barnes, a former great international player, was a guest on BBC Newsnight in the euphoric aftermath of the England victory over Germany. Barnes was asked if he thought that this “diverse” England team represented a new dawn in anti-racism in society. Barnes simply replied that it’s okay when England are winning, but you must wait to see what happens when the team loses. Education has to go deeper into society than football teams and society needs to be represented by ministers who model equity rather than personal privilege. Professor Bill Boyle, professor of education, University of Manchester 1989-2014 No diversity at the top To the Financial Times The FT is right…

A giant error of attribution When Madrid’s Prado Museum reopened last week, eagle-eyed visitors noticed that The Colossus, a painting once believed to be the work of Goya, but subsequently dismissed as “a botched job” created by a studio assistant, had been quietly reattributed to “the Spanish master”, said Isambard Wilkinson in The Times. The museum’s decision to downgrade the painting, back in 2008, was highly controversial. The Colossus was long thought to have been painted between 1818 and 1825 as an allegorical response to Spain’s defeat at the hands of Napoleon’s armies, but its authenticity was called into question after an extensive restoration in 1992. The art historian Peio H. Riaño gave a scathing assessment in the newspaper El Diario: “Thirteen years after having misattributed the painting in a…

Ben is anxious ahead of his interview for a nursing course. Sharing her own experience of cancer, Ruth tells him he’d make a great nurse. Eddie is £200 up in tips after driving a stag party in his limo, but later finds the groom passed out on the backseat. Ed recognises the groom as his old PE teacher; Eddie later extracts £100 from him to keep quiet about his night in the limo. Ben is nervous at the interview but talks about how Ruth has inspired him. Roy prepares for a first date with Leyla, who he’s been talking to on the phone. When she cancels, Phoebe grows suspicious – she’s worried that her dad is being catfished, but Roy won’t believe it. Lee tells Ian that some neighbours have…

What the experts say: how to cook well on a staycation This summer, once again, staycations are “top of the holiday menu”, said Katy Salter in Delicious Magazine. And unless you’re staying in a hotel (or planning to eat every meal in a restaurant), most will involve a significant element of self-catering. While it can be fun to prepare meals on holiday, it can also be quite a challenge. If you’re staying in a rental property, the “oven and kitchen gear won’t be what you’re used to at home”. If you’re camping, you’ll have to bring all your equipment with you. So it’s worth putting time and effort into ensuring that your staycation features plenty of lovely food. After all, it’s something you can control – unlike the British weather.…

Tips of the week... how to plant around ponds ● When it comes to ponds, there is a variety of plants to choose from. Oxygenators like fontinalis antipyretica (water moss) are fully submersed and help keep the water clear. ● Aquatics float with their roots in pots or pond sediment. Cover about 40% of a small pond’s surface with these plants to reduce direct sunlight and limit algae growth. ● Marginals such as dwarf reed mace (bullrush) should sit on the pond’s edge and have their roots below the water. ● If you don’t have a pond, one easy way to establish a water feature is to create a “mini pond in a pot”, which can be placed on a terrace or set within planting. ● Once filled with water…

Freedom day: Pingdemic pile-on “More than 15 months after the last normal commute”, the City of London officially went back to the office on Monday, said Bloomberg. Could have fooled us. “From London Bridge to King’s Cross”, numbers remained “stubbornly low”; queues for coffee were brief and popular lunch spots “saw little extra custom”. But this disappointment paled into insignificance next to the “chaos” being caused across the nation by the “pingdemic” of workers told to self-isolate by the NHS app, said The Daily Telegraph. Sectors from manufacturing to retail, transport, banking and hospitality have been hit. The pub group Greene King had to shut “33 pubs in the past week”. Iceland, which kept all its supermarkets open during lockdown, has now had to shut stores. Carmaker Vauxhall has…

Without activists, ESG is just hot air Tom Braithwaite Financial Times Environmental, social and governance initiatives are notoriously prone to “empty rhetoric and fuzzy targets”, says Tom Braithwaite. PwC is a case in point. In a “splashy” $12bn drive, the accounting giant is taking on 100,000 staff (more than the total workforce at Caterpillar, Shell or Procter & Gamble) to advise companies on “delivering sustained outcomes”. Many of these new hires will in fact be in traditional jobs such as auditing; but PwC seems to have calculated that “$12bn + ESG blather = $$$$$”. The “ESG complex” is going from strength to strength – with even “holdouts” such as ExxonMobil “crumbling”. But the oil major’s conversion is instructive. It wasn’t ESG rhetoric that persuaded Exxon to curtail new oil and…

The week’s best shares Asos The Times Freight and delivery worries have wiped 15% off the fast-fashion outfit’s value. But “fickle” investors overlook its international sales potential. The tie-up with store chain Nordstrom should accelerate US gains. Buy. £39.53. Howden Joinery The Times The UK’s dominant kitchen supplier has raised profit guidance amid the continuing home improvement boom. Shares trade at a premium, but recovering margins should prompt a further re-rating. Buy. 879p. HydrogenOne Capital The Mail on Sunday Clean hydrogen is a hot sector in green energy. This specialist fund, which floats this month backed by energy giant Ineos, is well-positioned to tap a market predicted to be worth £600bn by 2040. Buy. 100p (price on launch). Galliford Try Citywire The construction group is trading ahead of expectations with…

Two peers have been banned from Parliament’s libraries, restaurants and bars because they failed to complete their mandatory “Valuing Everyone” training. A House of Lords spokesperson said the move would protect staff by “minimising” contact in social spaces with Lord Kalms, 89, and Lord Willoughby de Broke, 82, who had refused to attend the anti-bullying and sexual harassment workshops. A “pregnant man” emoji is set to be introduced after a row over transgender representation in the phone symbols. It will join a “person with crown” for gender-neutral royalty, and follows a similar update to the “bearded person” emoji that allows users to choose between a masculine and feminine bearded face.…

Boris Johnson reportedly plans to hike up National Insurance (NI) to fund a long-promised overhaul of social care. The Prime Minister is said to have reached a deal with Chancellor Rishi Sunak that would see NI rise by a penny in the pound for both employers and employees, raising an extra £10bn a year. Any such increase would prove controversial, as the Tories promised at the last election not to raise income tax, VAT or NI. Critics also say it would increase the burden on younger taxpayers while sparing the retired, who do not pay NI. Full details of the plan are not expected until the autumn.…

Brussels Hunger strike: A hunger strike by hundreds of undocumented migrants is threatening to bring down the Belgian government. About 470 mostly North African migrants – many of whom have lived and worked in Belgium for many years – have occupied a Brussels church and university buildings in the capital, demanding the right to enter the formal economy as legal residents. Under the banner “We Are Belgium Too”, the so-called Sans-Papiers began a hunger strike two months ago. After migration officials refused to give ground, a few began refusing water. In response, some members of the country’s sprawling ruling coalition said they would quit if any of the migrants died: ministers from the Green and Socialist parties declared that they would resign “within the hour”. The hunger-strikers are four-fifths men,…

1 Moment 4 Life by Onika Maraj, Aubrey Graham, Nikhil Seetharam and Tyler Williams, performed by Nicki Minaj 2 Street Life by Joe Sample and Will Jennings, performed by Randy Crawford 3 Westside by Donald Custis, performed by TQ 4 Foolish by Ashanti Douglas, Mark DeBarge, Etterlene Jordan, Irving Lorenzo and Marcus Vest, performed by Ashanti 5 Mo Money Mo Problems by Christopher Wallace, Sean Combs, Mason Betha, Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, performed by The Notorious B.I.G. (feat. Puff Daddy & Mase) 6* Unfinished Sympathy by Robert Del Naja, Grantley Marshall, Shara Nelson, Jonathan Sharp and Andrew Vowles, performed by Massive Attack 7 Public Service Announcement by Shawn Carter, Justin Smith and Raymond Levin, performed by Jay-Z 8 Try a Little Tenderness by Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Henry…

People have seen mysterious objects – angels, spheres, triangles, ships – in the sky throughout recorded history. But the modern UFO traces its origins to June 1947, when the amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing a chain of nine shining convex disc-like objects flying near Mount Rainier in Washington state, at estimated speeds of 1,700mph. A flurry of other reports of “flying saucers” followed. Earlier that month, a rancher north of Roswell, New Mexico, had found mysterious hi-tech wreckage on his land. An air force major, Jesse Marcel, was sent to collect it, and in early July, with the saucer frenzy in full flow, the Roswell Army Air Field publicly stated that it had found the remains of a “flying disc”. The army quickly retracted the statement, claiming that the…

Trump finds a martyr for his cause Jonathan Chait NYMag.com “Who shot Ashli Babbitt?” That’s the question Donald Trump keeps asking, says Jonathan Chait. He’s referring to the air force veteran killed by police during the 6 January storming of the US Capitol. Her death, “while tragic, occurred for a very good reason”. Babbitt, who had been radicalised by online conspiracy theories such as QAnon, was shot while trying to force her way through a barricaded door to a chamber where members of Congress were hiding from the mob. Yet in rallies and interviews, Trump has called Babbitt “an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman” who was executed for “no reason” by a rogue cop affiliated with the Democrats. It’s part of a cynical – and worryingly effective – attempt to rewrite…

The risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19 remains extremely low in children, the largest study into the issue has found. Teams at University College London, Imperial College London and the universities of Bristol, York and Liverpool found that children had a roughly one-in-50,000 chance of being admitted to intensive care and a two-in-a-million chance of dying. However, catching the disease did increase the likelihood of serious illness in those with underlying medical conditions. During the first year of the pandemic, 25 children and teenagers died as a direct result of Covid-19 in England, and about 6,000 were admitted to hospital. The findings have been submitted to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, to inform vaccine and shielding policy for the under-18s. This is the first study to…

Pegasus is an ingenious piece of spyware that covertly allows access to the target’s mobile phone, said The Guardian. Once it gains access, via little-known software flaws, it can not just extract emails, photos and contact details, but also secretly activate the phone’s microphone and camera – in short, it can access “our most intimate secrets”. The Israeli company that makes it, NSO, claims that it sells its software only to vetted government clients, to help them prevent “terrorism and crime”. Unfortunately, that is not the case. An investigation coordinated by the NGO Forbidden Stories, Amnesty and 17 news organisations, including The Guardian, suggests that Pegasus has been used by many authoritarian regimes and right-wing populist governments to target journalists, human rights activists, dissidents and opposition politicians. Pegasus seems to…

“Never eat more than you can lift.” Miss Piggy, quoted in The Times “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” Oscar Wilde, quoted on The Browser “Liking money like I like it is nothing less than mysticism. Money is a glory.” Salvador Dalí, quoted in Forbes “Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault.” US journalist Henry Anatole Grunwald, quoted on Medium.com “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.” Orson Welles, quoted in the Daily Mail “To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.” Anthony Burgess, quoted on PasteMagazine.com “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” Donna…

In rugby league, it takes “years of blood, sweat and tears” to build up a legacy, said Aaron Bower in The Observer. Yet the big matches are often “decided in razor-thin, marginal moments”. So it proved at Saturday’s Challenge Cup final, “one of the best in recent memory”, fought between St Helens and Castleford, “two towns where rugby league is everything”. At half-time, Castleford were 12-6 up and looking good for their first cup win since 1986. Then, early in the second half, as Mark Percival seemed to spill the ball near the touchline, Regan Grace knocked it back infield to send St Helens’ captain, James Roby, over for a controversial try, awarded only after much deliberation from the video referee. Lachlan Coote’s conversion levelled the score, while two more…

To The Times The proposals made in the National Food Strategy are evidence-based, necessary steps in reversing the destructive effect that poor dietary habits are having on our health and environment. The UK has the worst diet in Europe, and has to change with decisive action. In addition to recommending that we eat 30% less meat and rethink land use, the report builds on the efficacy of the narrow soft drinks industry levy, which, despite initial uproar of nanny-statism, has reduced obesity and tooth decay in children. Although I am against demonising single ingredients (especially salt), focusing on the reduction of both salt and sugar will force the food industry to reformulate their highly processed products. The goal is not to make snack foods more expensive, but to drive a…

This “hokey horror” film trilogy, released over the past three Fridays on Netflix, came to a “surprisingly satiating” finale this week with Fear Street Part Three: 1666, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. The time-hopping franchise, based on the teen-fiction writer R.L. Stine’s sprawling book series, took viewers from 1994 in part one to 1978 in part two, before turning the clock back to 1666. This “longest, last and most audacious chapter” is set largely in a 17th century pilgrim colony rife with accusations of witchcraft and satanic worship, said Kevin Maher in The Times. The film, which owes an obvious debt to The Crucible, delivers a thesis “far meatier” than we had any right to expect from a slasher series. It suggests “that the original American sin is the…

Best books… Douglas Kennedy The bestselling writer and former theatre director chooses his five favourite books. Kennedy’s novels have sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and the latest, Afraid of the Light (Hutchinson £13.99), is out now The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 (Penguin £6.99). Fitzgerald’s seminal novel sold only 3,000 copies on its publication, but with its lyrical exactitude and an eye for the complex nuances of class and social hierarchy, it remains one of the most perfectly judged visions of that deeply American longing for perfection amid that equally American obsession with lucre. I re-read it every two years – and it always astonishes. A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone, 1981 (Picador £14.99). My favourite novel of the Reaganite 1980s by this shamefully undervalued…

Programmes India’s Rape Scandal Emmy Award-winning reporter Ramita Navai investigates two rape cases that lead to the highest reaches of Indian politics. Tue 27 Jul, C4 22:00 (55mins). Chris Packham: The Walk that Made Me The naturalist reflects on his life and on living with Asperger’s Syndrome, as he walks a favourite route along the river Itchen in his native Hampshire. Wed 28 Jul, BBC2 20:00 (60mins). BBC Proms: First Night of the Proms Live from the Royal Albert Hall as the season kicks off with the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing works including Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music. Fri 30 Jul, BBC2 19:30 (65mins) and BBC4 21:05 (70mins). King Gary The popular suburban sitcom returns: it’s a big day on Butterchurn Crescent as Gary hires a skip. Fri 30…

Cauliflower, parmesan and anchovy fritters Serves 4 ½ a large leafy cauliflower, cut into florets and leaves thinly sliced 1.5-2 litres groundnut oil, for frying for the batter: 50g plain flour 50g cornflour 30g parmesan, finely grated 2 salted anchovies, finely chopped zest of ½ an unwaxed lemon ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper 1 large free-range egg 75ml cold sparkling water sea salt and freshly ground black pepper • Cook the florets and leaves in boiling salted water for 5 mins or so. Drain well, refresh under cold water, drain again. • To make the batter, mix the flours with the cheese, anchovies, lemon zest and cayenne. Make a well and add the egg. Mix with a wooden spoon, gradually adding the fizzy water and drawing the flour into the…

Habitat Jambi Garden Lounger If you’re looking for a statement piece, this Habitat lounger is a good option. It has a bold multicoloured finish and can stay outside all year round, but it’s adjustable to only two positions (£150; habitat. co.uk). Tine K Bamboo Sun Lounger  For an eco-conscious option, this handmade bamboo lounger is a stylish choice. The cushion is available in white, grey or black, and the lounger also comes with a cover for light rain showers (from £522; idyllhome. co.uk). Amezza Acacia and Canvas Lounge Chair by La Redoute This coastal-style canvas lounger folds up easily and is made with durable and weather-resistant wood (£99; laredoute.co.uk). Click Sun Lounger Part of a large collection of outdoor furniture, this lounger has been designed to follow the structure of…

In a week of extremes, global stock markets dropped sharply on fears over the spread of the Delta variant – before bouncing back strongly. In New York, the Dow Jones tumbled by more than 2% on Monday; European exchanges, were hit by fears that curfew measures could be reimposed; and in London, some £54bn was wiped off the value of FTSE 100 stocks – marring England’s “Freedom Day”. The sell-off, which hit travel, retail and leisure stocks hardest, was exacerbated by concerns about the “pingdemic” – the number of mandatory isolations resulting from NHS Covid alerts – and its impact on staff shortages. The property portal Rightmove reported that “frenzied buyer activity” had driven the average asking price for a home in Britain to a new high of £338,447 –…

● Emerging troubles Not so long ago, everyone was talking up Asia’s emerging markets as prime beneficiaries of the post-Covid recovery. No longer, said The Wall Street Journal. According to Invesco market strategist David Chao, the spread of the Delta variant across Asia, coupled with low vaccination rates, “has taken wind out of the sail for many investors expecting an economic rebound” in the region. He expects them to continue pulling funds out of Asian stocks and shifting them to “developed markets with high inoculation rates”. The recent tech crackdown in China hasn’t helped sentiment, said Lauren Almeida in Investors’ Chronicle. Newly listed US shares in the ride-hailing app Didi have tanked following an intervention by Chinese regulators. The “sharp sell-off” doesn’t bode well, agreed George Magnus in the FT.…

Bob Diamond The former Barclays boss plans to stick it to his former colleagues, says Liam Proud on Reuters Breakingviews. Bob Diamond’s “blank-cheque company” is merging with Circle, the digital currency operator behind USD Coin, whose products “may one day threaten corporate banks’ core businesses”. Circle’s mooted $4.5bn value is premised on “eyebrow-raising growth rates”: in theory, the “total addressable market” for its dollar-pegged coin is the entire $20trn global “M2” money supply. But with just 1,421 Circle accounts open by June, world dominance is some way off. This is “arguably even more of a punt” than past Diamond ventures, like his African banking venture Atlas Mara – whose shares plunged by 80% soon after its 2013 float. Tanya Burr It’s almost 12 years since Tanya Burr, then working on…