Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1353 i The Week

What happened The Government was this week considering a rescue plan for firms at risk of being forced out of business by soaring energy prices. On Sunday, Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, told an interviewer that he was talking to the Treasury about what help could be offered. A Treasury official then flatly denied it (adding that it was not the first time Kwarteng had “made things up in interviews”) –raising speculation that Kwarteng had been trying to bounce Chancellor Rishi Sunak into action. But the next day, when he submitted a formal proposal to the Treasury, Downing Street backed him, insisting ministers were looking at how to protect energy-intensive industries such as steel, ceramics, glass and paper. Any help is expected to take the form of-state-backed loans, rather than…

The UK and EU are gearing up for their latest battle, said Cristina Gallardo and Hans von der Burchard on Politico, and once again, “Northern Ireland is at the heart of it”. In an uncompromising speech in Lisbon this week, Brexit Minister David Frost reiterated UK demands that the EU should renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol, which effectively keeps the province inside the single market. Failure to do so would be a “historic misjudgment”, he said, and could lead to the UK triggering Article 16 of the Protocol and suspending parts of it. Hours later, Brussels laid out its proposed concessions, said Daniel Boffey in The Guardian. It would be willing to allow a list of products – including most foods and all medicines – to sidestep EU law (or…

98% of parents said they suffered “extreme grief” after their children left home for university this year. 93% said they thought growing closer to their children during the pandemic had made the parting harder. The Guardian/Unite Students Only 20% of people say they trust the Government to do the right thing, down ten points since July. 45% say they think the Government is handling the pandemic well; 48% think the opposite. 28% say it is handling Brexit well – down from 44% in March 2020. 69% think it is handling the current supply problems badly; 21% say they are being handled well. 71% are worried about rising gas prices; 39% are worried about shortages of petrol, or of groceries. YouGov/The Times…

The lows of a medal winner Tom Daley was thrilled when – at his fourth Olympics – he won a gold medal in Tokyo. Yet he was already painfully aware that the high of such triumphs can be followed by an uneasy low, says Jane Mulkerrins in The Times. It’s something that he and his husband – screenwriter Dustin Lance Black–bonded over, when they met at a dinner in 2013. Daley was suffering in the aftermath of his success at the 2012 Games, and Black told him he’d experienced a similar thing, after winning an Oscar for Milk, sin 2009. “That’s what we connected over more than anything,” says Daley: “the huge high followed by the low”, and the sense that “you can’t talk to anyone about it. You can’t…

St Michael’s Church in Bournemouth is changing its name to “St Mike’s”, to try to attract more young people to its congregation. The Victorian church, which has just been renovated, is taking the step to be “attractive and engaging for younger generations”, said its Reverend, Sarah Yetman. One local critic told The Sun that “the idea that teenagers will be more interested in going to church if we rename it ‘St Mike’s’ is ridiculous. What’s next – St Dave’s? St Pete’s?” A Derbyshire man is so obsessed with the 1990s that he has transformed his home into a time capsule. Jack Walters, 23, has spent about £5,000 kitting himself out with accessories such as a TV from 1989, a VHS player, and a G-reg Austin Mini Metro, after moving into…

TUNISIA Hail the Arab world’s first female leader Gulf News (Dubai) Tunisia has made history by appointing the first Arab female prime minister, Najla Bouden Romdhane. It’s an important milestone, says Mohammed Almezel – although it’s worth remembering that until a century ago it wasn’t that rare for women to rule in the Arab world. Fatima al-Zamil, for instance, reigned over part of the Arabian Peninsula between 1911 and 1914. Way back in history, Shajarat al-Durr ruled Egypt following the death of her husband in 1250, helping defeat the crusaders; and Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba, reigned over a vast kingdom in present-day Yemen more than 5,000 years ago. For the past century, though, women in the Arab world have taken “a back seat”. It’s no surprise that Tunisia is…

The Premier League’s “unabashed worship of money” is no secret, said Oliver Holt in The Mail on Sunday. But it has seldom seemed more flagrant than last week, when English football rolled out the red carpet to let “a purveyor of pre-meditated murder, mass executions, state-sponsored misogyny and widespread oppression of LGBT rights” take over Newcastle United. Fans were jubilant when the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) took an 80% stake in the club, replacing the “hated” previous owner, Sports Direct tycoon Mike Ashley. But it’s a “strange kind of deliverance” when your “liberator” is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: the chair of PIF, deputy prime minister of Saudi Arabia, and the man who personally sent a hit squad to murder the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Newcastle fans…

A distinct chill has entered Franco-British relations, said Jon Henley in The Guardian. Britain’s former ambassador to Paris, Peter Ricketts, says they’re “as bad as I can remember”, while his French counterpart Sylvie Bermann reckons they’ve “never been this tense, this inimical”. Resentments caused by five years of ill-tempered Brexit negotiations have been exacerbated by a string of fresh cross-Channel disagreements. Britain has accused France of not doing enough to turn back migrants’ boats. France, in turn, has accused Britain of not paying it a penny of the £54m it promised to help it police the coast. Paris is furious about being blindsided over AUKUS, the new security pact between the UK, the US and Australia – an anger Boris Johnson fuelled by telling the French to “prenez un grip”.…

Many people had been expecting this winter’s Ashes to be cancelled, said Mike Atherton in The Times. Given the harsh Covid restrictions expected down under, it was felt that some England players would pull out and that, rather than send a substandard squad, the ECB would pull the plug on the tour. Yet such a scenario was never really on the cards. The interests of England and Australia are too closely allied: there’s simply too much money at stake to make talk of cancelling the Ashes anything other than “politicking”. And sure enough, with all fit players declaring themselves available, England have now announced their 17-man squad, said Ali Martin in The Guardian. It contains no great surprises. talisman With Jofra Archer and Olly Stone still out injured, the attack –…

To the Financial Times German politics may be, as Gideon Rachman suggests, saner than Britain’s, but, on immigration at least, popular attitudes are more liberal in Britain than in Germany (“Why Germany is the West’s sanest country”). A Pew Global Attitudes Survey published in September 2020 showed that in Germany, 58% favoured admitting fewer immigrants or none at all. In Britain, the figure was 37%, a lower figure than anywhere in the ten EU countries polled except Spain. In 2019, an Ipsos Mori poll showed 47% in Britain believing that immigration “had a generally positive impact”, a higher figure than anywhere in the EU. German politics is also less moderate than Britain’s, which does not have either a party of the radical Right, such as the AfD, nor a party…

Back in the 1990s, a South Korean government paper noted that a single Hollywood movie, Jurassic Park, had made more money for Universal Pictures than Hyundai would from selling 1.5 million cars. This paper sparked a national debate – and a plan to export South Korean culture. Three decades on, the country is reaping the benefits, as K-pop and K-drama sweep the world. In 2020, Parasite became the first foreign-language film to win a best picture Oscar; now, just weeks after its release, Squid Game has become Netflix’s highest ranking show in 90 countries, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. The premise of the drama is simple: 456 heavily indebted individuals are lured to an island to play children’s games, on the promise of a huge cash prize. When they…

A Picasso painting of a naked woman that lies beneath one of the masterpieces of his Blue Period has been recreated – using artificial intelligence, says Dalya Alberge in The Daily Telegraph. The crouching nude appeared in the background of his 1903 painting La Vie, but it was only discovered in 2010, when X-rays carried out by the Met in New York revealed that the artist had painted over it to create another 1903 work, The Blind Man’s Meal. Anthony Bourached and George Cann, respectively a neuroscientist and a physicist at University College London, used AI and 3D printing to recreate the lost painting: analysing Picasso’s brushstrokes in other paintings, they trained an algorithm to simulate how it would have looked. “Picasso likely painted over this work with reluctance,” said…

Programmes ear for eye Anew film exploring the black experience in the UK, adapted from her own play by the award-winning British writer Debbie Tucker Green. Sat 16 Oct, BBC2 22:15 (85mins). The Trick Dramatisation of the “Climategate” scandal of 2009, in which emails between scientists at the University of East Anglia were hacked by climate-change deniers to create a fake news story. Mon 18 Oct, BBC1 20:30 (90mins). Impeachment: American Crime Story For its third instalment, the anthology series delves into the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Clive Owen plays the president and Beanie Feldstein the young intern. Tue 19 Oct, BBC2 21:15 (60mins). Shetland Return of the popular detective series based on Ann Cleeves’s novels. A grieving DI Perez is called to investigate the murder of a prominent local lawyer. Wed…

New cars: what the critics say The Daily Telegraph Eight years ago, BMW’s Project i – and the i3 electric car – was meant to be “The Future”. What happened? In June, Tesla’s Model 3 was Europe’s second most popular car; the i3 was nowhere. Still, BMW insists its strategy is still on track, and now it has released its second EV – and it is a very different beast. Where the i3 was a “zany” little car, the iX is a powerful, brutalist, “yacht-sized SUV”. Auto Express With its cutting-edge tech suite and BMW’s new-generation electric motors, the iX promises much, “and it delivers”. Putting aside the blistering pace – 0-62mph in 4.6 seconds – there’s real depth to the package; the chassis feels expertly judged, cabin quality is…

Making gin in Yorkshire Along with the boom in craft distilleries, gin-making school shave popped up all over the place in the past five years. Harrogate Tipple’s has a particularly impressive location, says Lorna Parkes in The Guardian – a vaulted room in Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, that gives its three-hour-long courses the air of a Harry Potter potion-making class. Proceedings start with a lecture at the firm’s distillery in the nearby “chocolate-box” village of Ripley; students are then let loose in the castle’s gardens to collect botanicals with the aid of a printed guide. There’s a wide choice – from wormwood (bitter) to Lady Plymouth (“rose and mint dancing together”) – and selecting them involves quite a lot of rubbing and sniffing. With the addition of juniper and classics…

Sir John Chilcot 1939-2021 In June 2009, John Chilcot – a mild-mannered senior civil servant – was asked to chair the official inquiry into the Iraq War. At that time, he was regarded as a “safe pair of hands”, said The Guardian. He had been part of an earlier inquiry which had exonerated the Blair government over the sexing up of the “dodgy dossier”, with its misleading claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction; and the assumption was that he would not “rock the boat” this time either. Critics were convinced his inquiry would be a whitewash, and the longer it wore on, the more angry they became. But Chilcot proved to be a forensic and determined investigator, and when he finally published his 2.6 million-word report, seven years…

The IMF warned that the global economy is entering a phase of inflationary risk and called on central banks to be “very, very vigilant” – and take early action to tighten monetary policy if price pressures prove persistent. It added that inflation risks in the UK are “skewed to the upside”. The ONS reported that the number of UK job vacancies reached a record high of 1.1 million between July and September, underscoring the difficulties faced by employers. The economy, meanwhile, grew by 0.4% in August – the first full month without Covid restrictions. It is now 0.8% smaller than it was before the pandemic. Consumers were advised to plan ahead for Christmas because of ports delays. Felixstowe, the UK’s biggest commercial port, currently has 50,000 containers waiting to be…

● Royal flush The Duke and Duchess of Sussex “are getting into the investment business”, said Deal Book in The New York Times. They’re joining Ethic– a fintech asset manager that majors on sustainability – as “impact partners” and investors. Harry and Meghan hope their involvement will help “democratise investing” and boost the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement. And they certainly have the credentials to make ESG investing “part of the pop culture in a way that, say, BlackRock’s Larry Fink can’t”. The vogue for ESG is opening up unexpected opportunities, said Laurence Fletcher in the FT. Hedge funds have been “quietly scooping up” shares of profitable but “unloved” oil and gas firms discarded by ESG-minded managers. “It’s such a great and easy idea,” said Crispin Odey of Odey…

Sir David Lewis In his new role as the Government’s “supply chain tsar”, the former Tesco boss has been given the unenviable task of “trying to save Christmas”, said The Observer. If Dave Lewis can’t do it, one wonders who can. This, after all, is the man who “managed to dig the UK’s largest supermarket out of a hole”; Tesco has since ridden out “the worst of the supply-chain crisis” by investing in rail freight to combat the driver shortage. In the longer term, though, the only solution to the problem is to make driving lorries more attractive. When even simple benefits such as washing facilities and toilets are “well below standard” in Britain, it’s hardly surprising “drivers are choosing to truck on elsewhere”. Lewis should make a point of…

The first major verdict on the Government’s handling of the pandemic is in – and it makes for “shocking reading”, said the Daily Mail. In a joint report, two MPs’ committees said that poor decisions made early last year – particularly the delay in locking down – represented “one of the most important public health failures the UK has ever experienced”. The report, Coronavirus: lessons learned to date, found that the UK’s pandemic response was undermined by “group-think” among ministers, scientific advisers and civil servants; and that test and trace had been an expensive failure. It also confirmed that thousands of people had died unnecessarily because infected patients were discharged into care homes – with the safety of residents relegated to “an afterthought”. But the report didn’t only highlight the…

Controversy of the week “Send in the clowns.” That was Boris Johnson’s approach when he addressed the Conservative conference in Manchester last week, in the midst of a national crisis, said Iain Martin in The Times. He breezily ignored Britain’s problems, from petrol queues to high energy prices to rising inflation, and delivered a joke-filled “vaudeville routine”. He called Keir Starmer “Captain Hindsight”; he teased Michael Gove about his dancing; he said a trade deal with the US would enable us to “build back burger”. The party faithful lapped it up. But to much of the nation it looked “facile, silly and fundamentally unserious”. The business community was unimpressed, said Phillip Inman in The Observer. Johnson told retailers and farmers to stop whingeing about labour and supply-chain problems, brushing them…

Prague Narrow defeat: The Czech Republic’s populist PM Andrej Babiš suffered a shock defeat in last week’s general election – days after the Pandora Papers leak revealed that he had used offshore companies to buy luxury real estate on the French Riviera. The PM, a billionaire businessman who has frequently been accused of financial malpractice and abuse of power, had tried to present the leaks as the work of a domestic mafia. But it seems they cut through with voters: his ANO party had been leading in the polls, but in the event it was narrowly defeated by the-centre-right Spolu bloc. Babiš may not be forced from power: he could yet emerge as the leader of a coalition. But on Sunday, his chances of remaining PM were further damaged when…

1 Stairway To Heaven by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, performed by Led Zeppelin2 As Steals the Morn by Handel, performed by Lucy Crowe and Mark Padmore and the English Concert3 Rebel Rebel, written and performed by David Bowie4 Blue In Green by Miles Davis and Bill Evans, performed by Miles Davis5 Embroidery in Childhood by Britten, performed by Claire Watson6 Das Wirtshaus from Winterreise by Schubert, performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore7* Leb’ Wohl from Der Ring by Wagner, performed by Hans Hotter and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra8 Symphony No. 3 in D minor by Mahler, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Claudio Abbado Book: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter Luxury: a grand piano and tuning key * Choice if allowed only one record…

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are digital certificates of ownership or authenticity. They became notorious in March when one of them, conferring rights over a digital collage by the artist known as Beeple, was sold for $69.3m at Christie’s. (The buyer was a metaverse enthusiast and cryptocurrency investor known as MetaKovan.) Like cryptocurrencies, NFTs often come up in speculations about the metaverse. Both use an underlying technology – blockchain ledgers – that does away with the need for any one company or authority to guarantee them: great for techno-libertarians and “interoperability” enthusiasts. The best existing example of a metaverse project using NFTs is an online game called Axie Infinity, launched by a Vietnamese company in 2018. It’s a Pokémon-like trading and battling game: to play, you buy axies, axolotl-like creatures, digitised…

SWEDEN A Nobel snub for the vaccine pioneers Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich) Many were “incredulous” when the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine were announced in Stockholm last week, says Alan Niederer. Not that they had anything against David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, whose discovery of skin receptors that sense heat, cold and touch paves the way for a range of new medical treatments. But surely the “ideal” candidates were the developers of new mRNA technology used in the Moderna and Pfizer Covid vaccines. As well as saving millions of lives in the pandemic, the breakthrough could help treat cancer and other diseases. Honouring those behind it would have precisely fulfilled the wishes of Alfred Nobel, who said the award should go to those who “conferred the greatest…

Encouraging more people to get a flu jab every winter could be a cheap and effective way of reducing rates of dementia, a study has suggested. For the research, a team at Saint Louis University tracked 70,000 people over the age of 60 for several years, looking at how often they had a flu jab, and their later health outcomes. The findings, published in the journal Vaccine, showed that having the jab for four or five years made little difference to the chances of developing dementia – but that having it for six years in a row led to a reduction in risk of 14%, on average. It is thought that flu jabs boost the activity of immune system cells that are also responsible for repairing damage that can lead…

There was a “depressing familiarity” about the Pandora Papers, said Brooke Harrington in The New York Times. The contents of almost 12 million leaked financial records, published by an international consortium of journalists last week, exposed “legalised corruption” in the offshore finance industry “on an almost unimaginably vast scale”. But so, too, did the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers before them – leading to a sense that nothing ever changes. Actually, though, things are changing. It is clear that these leaks are discouraging elites from using offshore financial services. There may be no real chance of being prosecuted, but the risk of reputational damage is large: just ask Andrej Babiš, the Czech PM whose party lost a general election last week, days after the papers revealed that he had…

“Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant.” French prime minister Henri Queuille, quoted in the Montreal Gazette “If the past is a foreign country, then it has a thriving tourism industry.” Historian David Lowenthal, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.” Novelist Samuel Butler, quoted in Lapham’s Quarterly “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.” Carl Jung, quoted in The Observer “Whenever things are frightening, it is a good idea to measure them.” Author Daniel Kehlmann, quoted on The Browser “Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups it is the rule.” Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in The Irish Times…

Football England drew 1-1 with Hungary, maintaining their lead at the top of their World Cup qualifying group. In the final of the Nations League, France beat Spain 2-1. Formula 1 Valtteri Bottas won the Turkish Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen in second place. In the title race, Verstappen now has a six-point lead over Lewis Hamilton, who finished fifth. Rugby union Leicester top the Gallagher Premiership after a 21-16 victory over London Irish. Northampton slid to their first defeat of the season, losing 26-20 to Wasps.…

Best books… Abdulrazak Gurnah The UK-based Tanzanian writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last week. These are the books he recommended last year, to mark the release of his novel Afterlives (Bloomsbury £8.99) Maps by Nuruddin Farah, 1986 (Arcade £11.99). This is Farah’s most powerful novel. As with all of his fiction, it is set in his homeland of Somalia. Maps is an absorbing account of an orphaned boy growing up among women during the Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia. It is a poetic and superbly organised work. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, 1992 (Bloomsbury £8.99). The English Patient is a novel of many achievements. Its location is a ruined monastery turned abandoned military hospital in Italy towards the end of WWII. It has one solitary patient…

Move over, avocado toast According to some, it’s the “new avocado toast” – the hassle-free snack you’ve always wanted, says Ellie Krieger in The Washington Post. And the fuss about ricotta toast on social media is justified, because this “lusciously creamy” Italian fresh cheese really is a superb “toast topper”. There are – of course – endless variations, but my own favourite is an autumnal version that pairs it with pears, walnuts and maple syrup. Start by toasting some slices of “crusty” wholegrain bread. Spread about three tablespoons of ricotta on each piece, add three or four slices of pear, then drizzle half a teaspoon of maple syrup onto each one, scatter on some toasted walnut pieces, and finish with a sprinkling of cinnamon and salt. As a “winning combination…

Barcelona city break Housed in a 19th century monastery, Oriente Atiram Hotel on Las Ramblas offers 4 nights from £243pp (room-only), Manchester flights included. 0800-408 0778, jet2 holidays.com. Depart 21 Nov. Five-star Dubai stay A 6-night stay at Fairmont The Palm, situated in the sought-after Palm Jumeirah area, from £1,130pp b&b, Newcastle flights included. 01234-975975, loveholidays.com. Depart 5 Dec. Three nights in Budapest Stay at The Ritz-Carlton, within walking distance of Buda Castle and St Stephen’s Basilica, from £279pp b&b, Dublin flights included. 020-3598 4710, deluxebreaks.co.uk. Depart 7 Nov. Inverness escape for two Enjoy the 4-star Kingsmills Hotel’s romantic break offer, with a 2-night stay from £171pp b&b, including dinner on the first night. 01463-237166, kingsmillshotel.com. Arrive 12 Nov. Covid-19 travel restrictions: please check government websites for testing requirements, and…

James Brokenshire 1968-2021 James Brokenshire was a hardworking Conservative MP who proved effective in a series of demanding ministerial positions, said The Guardian. An earnest and thoughtful man, he commanded respect on both sides of the Commons. Boris Johnson described him as the “nicest” and “most unassuming of politicians”, following his death last week, aged 53; while Labour’s Angela Rayner paid tribute to his kindness, professionalism and dedication to public service. James Brokenshire was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, in 1968, the only child of Peter, a local government officer, and his wife Joan (née Pavey), said The Times. He was state educated, at Davenant Foundation School, and read law at the University of Exeter. He practised corporate law before going into politics – which, he said, prepared him well for…

Elon Musk has been threatening to move Tesla’s HQ from California to Texas for ages. Now that he has finally committed, the folks in Austin are feeling anxious, says Reuters. While welcoming the extra jobs, they fear that the city – whose unofficial motto is “Keep Austin Weird” – risks losing its boho vibe. Musk, who relocated there himself last December, is hardly the most orthodox of business leaders. And he has sought to reassure locals that “we’re gonna create ecological paradise right here”. But would-be homeowners are already paying the price for the city’s success in “luring” Tesla and other Californian giants: house prices have risen 40% in two years.…

Femtech High-tech, fintech, greentech. Next up? Femtech. This relatively unexplored investment theme – the lucrative market for women’s health apps – is slowly gaining momentum, said Elizabeth Uviebinene in the FT. Many investors (still mostly male) are waking up to the fact that this “under-served” market has legs. According to a 2020 report by Emergen Research, the global femtech market is predicted to be worth $60bn by 2027. The hottest segment? “Responding to the needs of women experiencing menopause.” Small company debt The Bank of England has reported “a big rise in the number of heavily indebted small businesses”, said Katherine Griffiths in The Times, “with many companies going into the red for the first time”. A third of small businesses in the UK now have “a high level of…

The week’s best shares Hotel Chocolat Investors’ Chronicle UK-focused production and soaring digital revenues have fuelled robust results. With profits exceeding expectations, the focus on ESG issues adds to the chocolate outfit’s appeal. Buy. 445p. MaxCyte The Sunday Times MaxCyte builds gene cell therapy machines for drug makers: numbering 25 top global pharmas as clients. Shares have fallen after an American clinical trial was put on hold, but growth is strong and the stock looks cheap. Buy. 722p. ScS Investors Chronicle Higher materials costs and supply-chain challenges have meant longer lead times. Yet the sofa-maker’s orders, while down from the post-lockdown boom, are higher than they were in 2019. Improved margins remain robust. Yields 3.8%. Buy. 264p. Superdry The Sunday Telegraph The sustainable fashion brand is one of the world’s…

The eight-year-old French boy who was thrown off a 10th-floor balcony at Tate Modern two years ago has finally been able to go back to school. The unnamed child, who was on holiday in London with his parents at the time, almost died after being attacked at random by a 17-year-old who has since been sentenced to life. His parents say that his injuries remain serious and life-limiting, but that he can now walk with a cane – and he is “super happy” to be back at “normal” school. A mother and son who came to Britain as refugees from Syria’s civil war have enrolled at the same university – on the same course. Manal Rawaeh, 47, and her son Bilal, 18, are both studying biomedical science at Nottingham Trent.…

The original Superman was totally devoted to the intrepid reporter Lois Lane. But in his latest incarnation, the comic book superhero has a romance with a male reporter. Jon Kent, the son that Clark Kent had with Lane, reveals his bisexuality in an issue due out next month. “A new Superman had to have new fights – real world problems – that he could stand up to,” said Tom Taylor, writer of the Son of Kal-El series. Today’s fashion-conscious consumers don’t only invest in clothes for the real world; they’re also buying digital outfits for their online presence. A site called DressX sells a range of 1,000 digital garments – from hats to elaborate dresses – which are pasted onto customers’ photos for use on social media.…

Jefferson County, West Virginia Submarine spy plot: A US navy engineer and his wife have been arrested and charged with passing on-top-secret details of America’s-cutting-edge Virginia-class nuclear submarines to a foreign power. They are accused of storing the information on a tiny data-card concealed in a peanut butter sandwich. Jonathan Toebbe, who has high-level clearance, was arrested last Saturday along with his wife Diana. According to prosecutors, the FBI had already intercepted a previous secret package and placed the couple under surveillance. Officers posing as agents for the unnamed foreign power then accepted the data-card sandwich from Toebbe while his wife acted as lookout. The memory card contained “militarily sensitive design elements, operating parameters and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarine reactors”, according to a federal court affidavit. Sacramento, California Ethnic studies:…

“It’s a strange thing about conspiracy theorists that they’re often so keen to collect the full set of conspiracies. Despite the unlikely nature of each individual theory, few adherents seem able to limit themselves to just one. For me, it severely undermines their plausibility. For example, it seems very unlikely, if not-totally unthinkable, that the Moon landings were faked. But it’s off-putting when you’re trying to open your mind to that possibility if whoever’s claiming it swiftly adds that the 9/11 planes were holograms, Covid is spread by 5G and the Queen is a lizard. Conspiracy theorists would do well to limit themselves to one mad thing each.” David Mitchell in The Observer…

The Tories won’t tell us if money talks Editorial The Guardian Take the money. Don’t ask where it came from. That seems to be the approach of Boris Johnson’s Government to party donations, says The Guardian. Look how it’s refusing to publish the names of the members of a secretive donor club, each of whom pays up to £250,000 a year to gain privileged access to the PM and the Chancellor. We know of it thanks to Mohamed Amersi, a Tory donor and bankroller of the PM’s leadership campaign, who spilt details about it earlier this year. Now, thanks to the Pandora Papers, we learn that Amersi has been linked to a huge corruption scandal in Uzbekistan. Then there’s Viktor Fedotov, a Russian oligarch who, the Pandora Papers show, is…

An implant for depression A patient who had spent years suffering from severe depression says her condition has become a “distant nightmare” since she was fitted with a pioneering “pacemaker” for the brain. The match box-sized device, developed by neuroscientists at the University of California San Francisco, works by detecting patterns of activity linked to depressive thoughts, and then disrupting them with electric pulses. It has only been tested on the one patient, Sarah, as a proof of concept; but the researchers are now enrolling more patients, to assess its broader potential. Sarah was so consumed by suicidal thoughts she had to move in with her parents and give up her job. She underwent a range of treatments, but none helped. Yet within 12 days of having the implant fitted,…

The film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats was savaged by critics – and left the composer so distraught he became a dog person. “I saw it and I just thought, ‘Oh God, no,’” he told Variety. “It was the first time in my 70-odd years on this planet that I went out and bought a dog.” His “emotional damage” was so severe, he asked an airline if he could take his Havanese puppy on the flight as a therapy dog. “The airline wrote back and said, ‘Can you prove that you really need him?’ And I said, ‘Yes, just see what Hollywood did to my musical Cats.’ Then the approval came back with a note saying, ‘No doctor’s report required.’” Madonna caused quite a commotion when she appeared on…

“It’s been quite a week,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg. And that was an understatement, said the FT. Last Monday, Facebook suffered one of its worst-ever outages. The next day, a former employee at its “civic integrity unit” delivered explosive testimony to Congress about the ways in which it puts profits before the safety of its users. Frances Haugen had already leaked a trove of internal documents to the press, so much of what she said was familiar, said Aaron Mak on Slate. Even so, senators were clearly shaken by her claim that Facebook’s own research had concluded that its Instagram app was harmful to vulnerable teenagers. This enabled her to drive home her wider point, that Facebook’s financial incentives are at odds with its users’ well-being. The longer people linger on…

Boxing: the Gypsy King triumphs in Las Vegas After numerous delays, and much legal wrangling, the third instalment of Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder finally took place in Las Vegas on Saturday. And it was worth the wait, said Bryan Armen Graham in The Guardian. For these two men produced what was, quite simply, one of the greatest fights in boxing history. In an exhausting encounter that fluctuated wildly, it was Fury who held the initial advantage, flooring Wilder with a right jab in the third round, said Gareth A. Davies in The Daily Telegraph. Yet the Alabaman swiftly bounced back, going after his foe with all the “vengeful power he could muster” and knocking him down twice in the very next round. Both times, somehow, the “Gypsy King” rose…

Football’s rotten core To The Guardian Newcastle United’s sale to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) marks a new low in football’s corruption by money. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives in Turkey in 2018 raises awkward questions for the Premier League. As David Conn notes: “The CIA concluded in November 2018, according to authoritative US reporting, that [Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince] ordered the murder; he has denied it. The same crown prince is chairman of the PIF.” Despite this, the Premier League has essentially judged Salman to be a “fit and proper person” to own Newcastle. Given Khashoggi’s murder, and having watched Match of the Day religiously since I was 11, I believe that to now watch it, Sky Sports or BT’s coverage of…

When Abdulrazak Gurnah was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for his 1994 novel Paradise), he and several fellow writers on the list were infamously referred to as the “B Team”, said David Sanderson in The Times. But last week, the Tanzanian-born writer – who has lived in Britain since the mid-1960s – became the first black winner of the Nobel Prize in literature since Toni Morrison in 1993. Gurnah, now 72, arrived in England as an 18-year-old refugee, having fled a violent uprising in his native Zanzibar, said Alexandra Alter and Alex Marshall in The NewYork Times. Miserable, poor and homesick, he supported himself by cleaning hospital floors – while also writing scraps of stories. These eventually grew into his first novel, 1987’s Memory of Departure, about a young man…

No Sudden Move 1hr 55mins (15) Crackling heist set in 1950s Detroit It has been eight years since Steven Soderbergh announced his “retirement”, with an outspoken attack on the big studios’ priorities, said Kevin Maher in The Times. But the director keeps churning them out even so, and on the evidence of this latest offering – a “period crime drama-cum-home invasion movie” set in Detroit in 1954 – he has lost none of his ingenuity. The story centres on a trio of petty criminals, who are hired for a “lucrative extortion job” that sounds straightforward but goes haywire “within minutes”. Even in his weaker films, Soderbergh gets the most out of his large ensemble casts. All the performances here are “on point”, but he has drawn particularly charismatic turns from…

Walter Sickert at Piano Nobile Looking at the paintings of Walter Sickert (1860-1942), you feel you almost know the characters who people them: the dressmaker in Portrait of Mrs Barrett (1906), captured gazing out impassively towards the right-hand side of the canvas; the elegantly coiffed yet apparently alarmed society lady of Oeuillade (1911); or the wild-eyed, toothy woman in a cloche hat who stares out at us from Chicken (c.1914). The clothes and accoutrements may be of another age, but these likenesses are invested with genuine vitality. All feature in The Theatre of Life, this two part exhibition of the artist’s portraits, an uncanny, involving experience which gives precedence to Sickert’s later work, a relatively under-explored phase of his career. Other highlights include a full-length portrait of the soon-to-abdicate HM…

Lilian confides to Justin that Brian is considering selling Home Farm because of the financial implications of Chris and Alice’s divorce. Justin has lunch with the farm’s manager Stella, whom he already knows, and tips her off about its uncertain future ahead of the BL board meeting. Furious that Brian didn’t tell her, Stella confronts him. He explains the family situation and apologises; appeased, Stella tries to convince him not to give up. Beth and Ben have dinner with Vince, who plays a joke on Ben. Angry with her dad, Beth storms out but they later make up. Chelsea wants to learn to ride a motorbike and asks Jazzer to teach her. Tracy, concerned, insists he make the lesson slow and boring, but Chelsea convinces him to go fast. In…

Serves 2 2 tbsp oil 200g raw, peeled and de-veined king prawns ½ an onion, finely diced 2 eggs, beaten 50-60g shiitake (de-stemmed) or chestnut mushrooms, finely sliced 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 spring onions, roughly chopped 2 large portions of cooked and chilled rice (from about 200g uncooked weight) 1½ tbsp soy sauce 1 tbsp mirin 1 tbsp sake 1 tbsp sesame oil ¼ tsp dashi powder white pepper, to taste 20-30g beni shoga (red pickled ginger, available online or in Asian supermarkets), coarsely chopped • This is a very quickly cooked dish, so make sure that all your prep is done and laid out before you start cooking. • Heat half the oil in a reliable non-stick frying pan (skillet) or well-seasoned wok over a very high…

Gleb House, Southleigh, Devon Inspired by the ideal of Italian agriturismo, this restaurant with rooms in the rolling hills of south-east Devon is a lovingly crafted delight, says Sally Shalam in Condé Nast Traveller. Occupying a “handsome” Georgian rectory on a 15-acre smallholding not far from the Jurassic Coast, it has five colourful bedrooms, a separate dog-friendly annexe, and lively decor – including hand-painted lamps, geometric tiles and floral wallpapers. The restaurant serves good Italian-influenced food, made with locally grown ingredients: the butter, yoghurt, charcuterie, breads and pastries are all made, cured or baked onsite. Doubles from £129. 01404-871276, glebehousedevon.co.uk.…

Asos: out of fashion The online fast fashion giant Asos began the year triumphantly “scooping up the remains of Philip Green’s empire”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. It has been downhill ever since. This week, the group (founded in 2000 and focused on twentysomethings) warned that profits next year could be more than a third lower than expected – prompting a share price tumble of 13%, and the immediate exit of CEO Nick Beighton (pictured). Asos’s market value has now halved to £2.4bn since the start of the year. There’s “something familiar in this story for long-term Asos watchers”: every time the share price hits £60 it halves within 12 months. It seems “the curse has struck again”. “Sudden departures unnerve investors when detail is absent,” said Lex in…

The IMF boss should fall on her sword Jawad Iqbal The Times Finance ministers and central bankers have converged on Washington for the first in-person International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings since the pandemic began. It hasn’t been an easy session, says Jawad Iqbal in The Times. Just when the world needs a steady hand on the tiller, the IMF’s managing director, the Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva, has become embroiled in a damaging scandal. An independent report charges that while in a previous senior role atthe World Bank, she falsified China’s scores in the World Bank’s Doing Business index, an influential guide for investors. The alleged data-rigging, which Georgieva denies, “spared China an embarrassing fall in the rankings”. On Monday, the IMF’s board affirmed its “full confidence” in Georgieva…

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