Innholdsfortegnelse for 1385 i The Week

What happened Sue Gray’s long-awaited report into lockdownbreaking parties in Downing Street was finally released on Wednesday. In the 37-page document, the senior civil servant condemned a series of gatherings in No. 10 and Whitehall, describing how officials enjoyed karaoke and drank late into the night while the country was under tight restrictions. The senior leadership at Downing Street, wrote Gray, “must bear responsibility for this culture”. In a statement to the Commons, Boris Johnson said he was “humbled” and had “learnt a lesson”, but hoped that the Government could now “move on”. The publication of Gray’s report followed the conclusion last week of the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into “Partygate”. The force revealed that 126 fixed-penalty notices had been levied on 83 officials. To the surprise of many, Johnson escaped…

We are witnessing “an abject failure of government”, said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. Inflation rose to 9% in April, its highest level since 1982. It is expected to top 10% by October, when, the regulator Ofgem warns, household energy bills will jump again, by 42%. Much of the current Cabinet were “barely in short trousers the last time price spikes this severe tore through the economy”. Perhaps that’s why few of them seem to have any sense of the “chaos that is unfolding before our eyes”. The poorest will bear the brunt, because they spend such a high proportion of their income on energy and food. But the effects are already being widely felt: according to Ipsos Mori, two in three people have turned down their heating to…

The BBC, which had to apologise after the words “Manchester United are rubbish” appeared on a BBC News ticker. Presenters later told viewers that it was an error, caused by a trainee writing “random things” while learning how to use the ticker. Gap years, with the sudden collapse of Raleigh International, one of the first charities to specialise in sending school leavers to do voluntary work overseas. Prince William is among its alumni. Passengers approaching Gatwick, who were panicked by the sight of a large sign reading “Welcome to Luton”. A YouTube prankster later admitted to erecting the 60-metre sign in a local field, and apologised to anyone who was “seriously thrown”.…

Hanover, Germany Schröder’s disgrace: The former chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder, finally stepped down as board chairman of the state-owned Russian oil giant Rosneft last week. The 78-year-old’s close ties to the Kremlin have long been a source of controversy, and his refusal to cut them following the invasion of Ukraine had caused widespread anger. A day before he announced his resignation, the Bundestag had voted to strip him of his postchancellorship privileges, including his taxpayer-funded office, and the European Parliament had called for sanctions to be imposed on him. A Social Democrat who served as German chancellor from 1998 to 2005, Schröder began working for the Russian gas firm Nord Stream within days of leaving office. He later accepted jobs with other Russian firms, including Gazprom and Rosneft, and…

1* Proud by Heather Small and Peter-John Vettese, performed by Heather Small 2 Own It by Michael Omari, Ed Sheeran, Fred Gibson and Damini Ogulu, performed by Stormzy ft. Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy 3 Toxic by Cathy Dennis, Christian Karlsson, Pontus Winnberg and Henrik Jonback, performed by Britney Spears 4 Lose Yourself by Marshall Mathers, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto, performed by Eminem 5 Paradise by Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion, Brian Eno and Chris Martin, performed by Coldplay 6 Walking on Sunshine by Kimberley Rew, performed by Katrina and the Waves 7 Unforgettable by Karim Kharbouch, Khalif Brown, Christopher Washington, Abel Tesfaye, J. Aujla and McCulloch Sutphin, performed by French Montana ft. Swae Lee 8* Rocket Man by Bernie Taupin and Elton John, performed by Elton John Book: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins Luxury:…

Norma McCorvey, better known as “Jane Roe” (the feminine equivalent of “John Doe”, a placeholder name), was born in Louisiana in 1947 and had a chaotic upbringing. She had already given up two babies for adoption when she found herself pregnant for a third time in 1969, aged 21. This was how she ended up as the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade. The litigation took so long that her pregnancy came to term: a third baby had already been given up for adoption by the time the case reached the supreme court. McCorvey identified herself to the media soon after the judgment, and sought to cash in on her fame. In 1995, while living in a lesbian partnership, she converted to evangelical Protestantism, with a televised baptism in a backyard…

State-by-state abortion laws are no solution Ronald J. Granieri Los Angeles Times There’s a“certain soothing quality” to the argument that abortion policy is best left to individual states, says Ronald J. Granieri. Let each decide how restrictive it wants to be, and we can all move on. If only it were that simple. In practice, “let’s leave it up to the states” quickly morphs into “we expect other states to comply with our laws and will demand federal action to guarantee it”. Look at the history, such as the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, to see how vexed the issue could become. Those laws sought to manage relations between slave and free states by requiring even those states that didn’t allow slavery to facilitate the forcible return of…

Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, northern Nigeria, was once seen “as an oasis of knowledge in a vast land of aridity… a symbol of enlightenment and civility”. Not any more, said Dare Babarinsa in The Guardian (Lagos). Earlier this month, Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a bright young Christian student who’d done well in her exams, wrote to fellow students on a WhatsApp group saying “I thank Jesus for my success.” From then on, “death stalked her”. Enraged by her praise of Jesus, some Muslim fellow students accused her of making blasphemous remarks about the Prophet Mohammed. Dragging her outside, they beat her to death and set fire to her body. When the suspects were arrested, a mob went on a rampage in the town, demanding their release and insisting…

Pollution claimed nine million lives in 2019, accounting for one in six deaths, a study in The Lancet Planetary Health has concluded. Researchers at the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution in Switzerland found that the figure had barely budged since they last examined the link between pollution and death in 2015, but that fatalities caused by household air pollution – for instance by burning wood indoors – had fallen from 2.9 million in 2015 to 2.3 million in 2019, while deaths from outdoor pollution had risen from 4.2 million to 4.5 million. More than 90% of the pollution-related deaths occurred in low-and middle-income countries. “Nine million deaths is a lot of deaths,” said co-author Philip Landrigan. “We’re making gains in the easy stuff and we’re seeing the more difficult…

Windfall taxes always sound easy and harmless, said the Daily Mail. “Very few people feel tender emotions towards huge corporations”, such as the oil and gas companies that are currently raking in record profits. And at a time when millions are struggling because of tax hikes, and runaway inflation, “the idea of creaming off large sums of money from energy giants and using it to ease the pain of ordinary people is almost impossible to resist”. Labour first proposed a one-off tax on North Sea oil and gas producers in January, which it says could raise £2bn to set against energy bills. Initially, the Government rejected the idea out of hand. But now the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is seriously considering a windfall tax, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times.…

“If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.”Judith Martin, quoted in The Washington Post “Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people.”David Sarnoff, quoted on The Browser “Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don’t need any of those things.”P.J. O’Rourke, quoted in Forbes “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”Oscar Wilde, quoted on Salon “We tell ourselves stories in order to live… We look for the sermon in the suicide.”Joan Didion, quoted in The Guardian “It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.”Anthony Weston, quoted in The Bristol Post “It’s a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift…

Football Leeds avoided relegation from the Premier League with a 2-1 victory over Brentford. Burnley, who lost 2-1 to Newcastle, have been relegated, along with Watford and Norwich. F1 Max Verstappen won the Spanish Grand Prix to establish a six-point lead in the drivers’ standings over Charles Leclerc. The Monacan had been leading until a power unit failure forced his retirement from the race. Tennis Naomi Osaka, the former world No. 1, lost 7-5, 6-4 in the first round of the French Open to Amanda Anisimova of the USA.…

by Anne de Courcy W&N 336pp £22 The Week Bookshop £17.99 Nancy Cunard was “the embodiment of the poor little rich girl”, said Rupert Christiansen in The Daily Telegraph. The only child of wealthy but neglectful parents – her English father was a scion of the Cunard shipping line, her mother a Bostonian heiress – she became famous in the Roaring Twenties for her bewitching good looks, and for her “boozing and bedhopping”. There was “plenty that was good and clever inside” her; but she was also violent and self-destructive, and in older age she suffered a “ghastly decline”. Her “roller-coaster life” has inspired several biographies, including “outstanding” ones by Anne Chisholm and Lois Gordon. What makes Anne de Courcy’s distinctive is that it focuses on the 1920s and early…

Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 musical My Fair Lady is so “witty and well-crafted” that, given enough resources, it’s hard to mess it up, said Nick Curtis in the London Evening Standard. Bartlett Sher’s “Rolls-Royce of a revival” at the Coliseum has certainly had money spent on it. “The sets are clever, the costumes stunning, and there’s a full-on Broadway dance routine featuring showgirls, showboys and everything in between” for Get Me to the Church on Time. But the production also feels “fresh” and modern, with “colourblind casting of proles and aristocrats” and a sensational performance from Amara Okereke as Eliza Doolittle. The first black actress to play Eliza, she has an “effortlessly clear, full and expressive singing voice, and can be meltingly soft, blazingly furious and beautifully still. She owns…

Audrey Niffenegger’s debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, has sold so many copies since its publication in 2003 that “most people know the basics” of the plot already, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. In case you don’t, it revolves around a librarian called Henry, who has a rare genetic disorder that causes him to travel through time, landing him “dazed and naked wherever the cosmos takes him”. Over the course of these “unchronological journeys”, he meets his soulmate, Clare, but they are regularly wrenched from each other’s arms “to reunite weeks, months or years later in more or less romantic scenarios”. The book was made into a 2009 film, and now Apple TV+ has had a go, with some success. Rose Leslie brings “spark” to the title role, and…

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 1965 (Penguin £9.99). When I read this book at university, as I dreamed of becoming a journalist, it stopped me in my tracks. Capote’s ambition was storytelling with “a narrative form that employed all the techniques of fictional art, but is immaculately factual”. Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort by Edith Wharton, 1915 (Hesperus Press £8.99). When I immersed myself in this, on a long train journey, I kept pausing to absorb the beauty of Wharton’s prose, her sharp imagery of WWI battlefields. I was in Syria a lot then, reporting on its war; so much was much the same. Wharton’s writing was also a reminder of the battle for women then just to get to the frontlines. Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins…

Programmes Midsomer Murders: 25 Years of Mayhem Documentary celebrating 25 years of the cosy crime drama, and the many stars (and stars to be) that have turned up in it. Sun 29 May, ITV1 19:00 (60mins). Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen The jubilee celebrations kick off with the story of the Queen, featuring never-before-seen home movies. Sun 29 May, BBC1 19:45 (75mins). Ghosts in the Ruins Nitin Sawhney’s site-specific response to Britten’s War Requiem is performed in Coventry Cathedral, to mark its 60th anniversary. Sun 29 May, BBC4 20:00 (60mins). Two Daughters Mina Smallman, the retired archdeacon whose daughters were killed in a park in London in 2020, tells Stacey Dooley how her faith helped her cope with their murder, and the police response to it. Sun 29 May, BBC2 21:00…

Kay Mellor 1951-2022 One November night in the 1980s, Kay Mellor was being driven by her husband to a party in Bradford. They took a wrong turn, said The Guardian, and ended up in the town’s red-light district. “I could see a young girl and immediately thought, ‘She’s a prostitute,’” Mellor recalled. The girl stepped towards their car and ducked down to see if the driver might be a punter. “She could only have been 13 or 14… Her legs were bare – they were completely blue and mottled with the cold. I just remember being completely shocked because I had daughters of her age. I felt as if someone had just punched me in the stomach and winded me.” How could it be, Mellor asked herself, that a girl…

• Nowhere to run… Investment old-timers love to pooh-pooh contemporary market skirmishes, said Katie Martin in the FT. “You think this is bad? Pah, you should have seen Black Monday…” But right now, even the old-timers accept “we are at a historic juncture”. It’s not just that the US S&P 500 is hovering close to bear territory, having fallen by 19% this year, and dragging down other equity markets with it. The big and worrying change is that bond markets, which usually rally when recession threatens, are falling too because of the threat posed by inflation. “Adherents to the classic portfolio split – 60% stocks, 40% bonds – haven’t had it so bad in half a century.” No one is clear how the situation might unfold. “As it has never…

Stuart Kirk Should investors worry about climate risk? Not according to HSBC’s “head of responsible investing”, said Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian. In an extraordinary speech to the FT’s Moral Money conference last week, Stuart Kirk took a rhetorical axe to the notion that investors have a duty of care, claiming that, throughout his career, there was “always some nutjob telling me about the end of the world”. “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years?” he asked. “Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages.” In an accompanying slide, Kirk – a former editor of the FT’s Lex column – stated that “unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong”. It was a PR disaster for HSBC; Kirk has now been suspended, amid calls for…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1313 An Ettinger shoe horn and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 6 June. Send it to The Week Crossword 1313, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid or listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) Bridle Hide travel shoehorn in black, which retails at £75, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 7 Aristocrat I have seen in pubs (8) 9 Worn-out like an umbrella (4,2) 10 Appreciates temporary accommodation (4) 11 Finished with flexibility? It’s too much (10) 12 Overheard more obese retailer (6) 14 Golf hit near tee – the caddy’s content? (5,3)…

What happened Unprecedented disruption of food supplies caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine risks triggering a global crisis, the International Monetary Fund warned this week. The IMF said soaring food prices – which are up 30% in a year – will hit those at all income levels and could set off a wave of migration from the worst affected areas. Separately, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged Russia to unblock exports of Ukrainian grain, and warned of “mass hunger and famine” in years to come if the situation doesn’t improve. Together, Russia and Ukraine produce nearly a third of the world’s wheat exports, 29% of its barley exports, and 75% of its sunflower oil. But Russia’s export capacity has been hit by sanctions, and its blockade of Black Sea ports…

The number of men and women getting married has fallen to a new low, according to the Office for National Statistics. In 2019, 219,850 couples married in England and Wales, the fewest since 1893. Just one in five couples had a religious ceremony. The average age of the newlyweds reached a record high, of 32.3 years for women and 34.3 for men. Contestants on Love Island will be wearing secondhand bikinis this year, as the reality TV show tries to go green. In the past, it has been accused of promoting a throwaway culture by sourcing the clothes worn on it from fast-fashion sponsors. Now, it has ditched those brands in favour of eBay, and all the outfits will be “pre-loved” items found on that site.…

Railway workers represented by the RMT union have voted overwhelmingly in favour of national strikes. Some 70% of the union’s 40,000 members took part in the vote, and 89% backed the strike. The union will now decide on a timetable of action, starting in mid-June, which will be implemented if no settlement can be reached in the dispute over pay, conditions and job losses. RMT workers voted in favour at 13 train companies, including Great Western Railway and LNER; staff at Network Rail, which hasn’t taken part in a national strike since 1994, also backed the action. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that in the event of crippling strikes, the Government would prioritise the supply of food, goods and energy.…

Indianapolis Formula milk shortage: In an attempt to ease a nationwide shortage of formula milk for babies that has left millions of parents struggling to feed their infants, President Joe Biden has invoked the Defence Production Act to enable him to deploy the US military to fly in supplies. The first plane, carrying 35 tons of formula from Switzerland via Germany, arrived in Indianapolis on Sunday. Formula – the production of which is dominated by a handful of big players – was already in short supply owing to pandemicrelated supply chain problems. But the shortage has dramatically worsened following concerns over insanitary conditions at the nation’s biggest formula manufacturing plant. The plant’s owner, Abbott, recalled vast quantities in February and had to temporarily cease production. The shortage has led to…

“On the London Underground, posters warn that‘intrusive staring’ is a form of sexual harassment, and urge commuters to report it. It’s human nature to stare, explains a spokeswoman for British Transport Police, but it’s‘different when someone is staring, leering or there’s a sexual motivation’. When, though, does a stare become a leer and a leer an ogle? How quickly we arrive at the ridiculous. Yes, campaigners say a spectrum exists with staring at one end and rape at the other. But the majority roll their eyes, they become cynical about the #MeToo propensity to take offence at anything, and gradually the whole cause of tackling more serious crimes against women is undermined.” Clare Foges in The Times…

Take as much holiday as you want… sucker! Editorial Financial Times Forget about annual leave: take as much time off as you want. That policy, long favoured by tech firms – Netflix scrapped holiday entitlement back in 2010 – is now being adopted by big city firms: last week Goldman Sachs offered such a deal to its senior bankers. But “beware the siren call of unlimited vacation”, says the FT: the evidence shows that when you offer people unlimited holidays, they actually take fewer days off, especially if they work in cut-throat environments where their jobs are on the line. “What was once ordained becomes a perk, laden with guilt and anxiety.” Colleagues, rather than the HR department, start to monitor your time off. Research by Namely, the HR platform,…

Children are exercising even less Children in the UK are less active now than they were before the pandemic, a study has found. By the latter half of 2021, fewer than a third of children were doing the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day, the research suggests; and on average they were active for 56 minutes on weekdays – eight minutes less per day than children of the same age before the lockdowns. The study involved 393 children and their parents who were recruited from schools in the Bristol area in May last year, a few weeks after schools had reopened. Over the next few months, participants wore accelerometers, to gauge the intensity of their activity, and were asked about their lifestyles. This data was…

The actor and writer Stephen Fry got more than he bargained for when he met Princess Margaret at a party, and told her that he was related to John Fry, a parliamentarian who had signed Charles I’s death warrant in 1649. Margaret’s response, Fry told the Radio Times Television Festival last week, was to pick up a fork and stab him in the leg with it. “There,” she said as he yelped in pain. “We’ve got some of our own back.” As president, George W. Bush was well known for his verbal gaffes. “Rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?” he famously declared in 2000. Last week, he raised eyebrows again when, during a speech in Dallas, he railed against “the decision of one man to launch a…

Boris Johnson’s attempts to tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol have already met with strong resistance from Brussels and Dublin, said The Independent. Now Washington too has made its disapproval clear. The Foreign Secretary Liz Truss last week threatened unilaterally to suspend parts of the Protocol (which establishes a customs border in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in order to ensure frictionless trade between the North and the Republic). But the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has warned that such a move could destroy any chance of a free trade deal with the US. A US delegation to Ireland and the UK, led by the congressman and Biden ally Richard Neal, drove home the same point. A US trade pact was meant…

In praise of bureaucrats To the Financial Times The Government’s decision to cut 90,000 civil servants from its payroll is a mistake. It will lead to a switch from in-house expertise to outsourced management consulting firms. In 2021, the Government spent £2.5bn of taxpayers’ money on management consultants. This would have paid for 50,000 civil servants for one year at an average salary of £50,000. Over decades, Whitehall departments build up expertise that is retained for the country. Governments come and go. Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg appear to view “small government” as big payouts to management consultants. Amanda Goodall, associate professor, Bayes Business School, London Wake up, Bill Gates! To The Guardian Your interview with Bill Gates showed him to be a very wellinformed man. However, he continues to…

by Simon Kuper Profile 240pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 Written by Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper, Chums is a “short, sharp and often disturbing examination of how our current politics was first played out at Oxford half a lifetime ago”, said Tim Adams in The Observer. It centres on the coterie of young Tories who arrived at the university in the mid- or late-1980s, became prominent members of the Oxford Union, and went on to run the country. While Boris Johnson (pictured in 1985) is the preeminent figure in this group, Kuper’s survey includes a host of ancillary characters, among them Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and the former MEP Daniel Hannan. It’s no accident, Kuper suggests, that so many leading Brexiteers emanated from this clique (which pointedly doesn’t include…

The artistic convention of depicting a woman positioned by a window “dates back millennia”, said Hettie Judah in The Guardian. From the craftsmen of the ancient world to Vermeer to Cindy Sherman, artists have found the window a rich symbol. It can be philosophical – “a threshold between interior and exterior worlds”, confinement and freedom – or more earthy: it has often been used as a pictorial shorthand for prostitution. This thoughtful and “tightly structured” exhibition explores the history of the tradition, as it has survived down the centuries. Taking in sculpture, paintings, prints, photographs and drawings, it mixes bona fide masterpieces with “intriguing oddities”, grouping works together in thematic clusters that probe subjects including identity, voyeurism, solitude and longing. You can see Rembrandt’s touching Girl at a Window (1645),…

• It takes between one and four weeks to press flowers. For best results, use a flower press with blotting paper and card to draw out the moisture and prevent rotting. • Choose flowers with a flat petal structure and a slender stem and avoid large juicy heads. Pick flowers when they are dry and at their peak, and press them the same day. • Blot the end of the stem, and position in the middle of the blotting paper in the press leaving plenty of room. Spread out petals and leaves so that they lie as flat as possible. • Lay another sheet of blotting paper on top and press down gently, then add a layer of card and another sheet of blotting paper, alternating the position of the…

Vangelis 1943-2022 Early in his career, he was in a hit band with Demis Roussos; later, he wrote the score for Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic Blade Runner. But Vangelis, who has died aged 79, will be remembered for the soaring music he wrote for the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, said The Daily Telegraph. The film was about two outsiders competing in the 1924 Olympics, and Vangelis’s Oscar-winning theme, with its “pulsating high-gloss synthesiser melody”, has been the backdrop to several more recent Games; in London in 2012, it was memorably performed at the opening ceremony by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle, and featuring a disruptive appearance by Rowan Atkinson in character as Mr Bean. Yet Vangelis was “dismissive” of the score’s enormous popularity, calling it “only…

The UK’s richest people added £50bn to their coffers in the last year, said Katie Grant on iNews.co.uk. Hardly a message that will go down well with “the more than one million people expected to fall into poverty”. Here are some of this year’s headlines: • “The top 250 entries” in this year’s list now “hold more wealth collectively than the top 1,000 on the 2017 list”. Their combined wealth grew to £710.7bn – up 8% on last year. • A changing of the guard sees the Ukrainian-born billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik (down £3bn to £20bn) cede his place as the UK’s richest to Sri and Gopi Hinduja and family (up £11.5bn to £28.5bn), whose industrial and financial empire enjoyed a bumper year. • Shooting into second place is Sir…

The week’s best shares Aviva The Times The insurer has cut costs and slimmed down. The March acquisition of wealth manager Succession is set to attract new business from existing customers. The generous potential 8.9% divi yield looks more secure. Buy. 405.65p. BHP Group The Daily Telegraph Commodities tend to outperform in high inflation eras. This diversified miner aligns its portfolio with growth sectors: including potash (a fertiliser component), and copper and iron ore (key in the shift to net-zero). Buy. £25.99. British Land The Mail on Sunday The London-focused REIT has proved nimble and adaptable, moving into urban logistics and developing “campuses” that include homes, offices, shops, restaurants and outdoor space. Profits are up 25%. Buy. 519p. Moneysupermarket The Sunday Times Insurance revenues are flat, and record energy costs…

The National Opera of Ukraine reopened last weekend for the first time since the Russian invasion in February. Saturday’s performance of Rossini’s comic opera The Barber of Seville was reportedly given a ten-minute standing ovation by the audience in Kyiv, which included soldiers in fatigues, some of whom had never been to the opera before. Only 300 tickets are being sold for each performance, in case the auditorium has to be rapidly evacuated during an air raid. A statue of the 19thcentury palaeontologist Mary Anning has been unveiled in her home town of Lyme Regis, following a campaign by a local schoolgirl. Aged 11, Evie Swire was hunting for fossils when she asked her mother if they could go and look at a statue of Anning – the first person…

The Elizabeth Line, which finally welcomed its first passengers, a week after the Queen herself had officially opened the £20bn service that runs underground across London. Construction of the Crossrail line, and its 10 new stations, began in 2009; it was originally due to open in 2018. This week, enthusiasts queued overnight to be the first to travel on its 205-metre-long trains. Doncaster, with news that it is being awarded city status, to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee. Other winners of the competition for city status include Milton Keynes, Colchester, Wrexham, Dunfermline and Bangor. Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, who became the first frontline politician to feature in The Sunday Times Rich List. He and his wife, Akshata Murty, came 222nd on the UK list with an estimated combined fortune of…

84% of British adults who started working from home during the pandemic say they plan to carry on doing so for part of the week. 8% say they plan to return to the office full-time. The Times/ONS 52% of Republican voters want GOP candidates in the midterm elections to demonstrate their loyalty to Donald Trump. CBS News/YouGov 82% of Ukrainians say that Ukraine should not sign away any of its territories as part of a peace deal with Russia, under any circumstances; 8% were undecided. Among those living in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, 77% thought no territory should be signed away. Kyiv International Institute of Sociology/Reuters…

Escape from Mariupol Igor Pedin, a 61-year-old former ship’s cook, was at home in Mariupol when Russian troops arrived on 20 April and began going house to house, shooting people at will. It was then that he decided to leave. Packing a rucksack, he set out with his mongrel terrier dog Zhu-Zhu for what would be a 140-mile walk to the relative safety of the Ukrainianheld city of Zaporizhzhia. The journey was fraught with danger. As he made his way through Mariupol, stumbling through craters and past dead bodies, he managed to make himself invisible to Russian soldiers. “I looked like a vagabond to them, I was nothing,” he told Daniel Boffey in The Guardian. But more dangers awaited in the surrounding countryside: he had to dodge the mines that…

Snack fans have been divided by a new flavour sensation: cheese and onion chocolate, packed “with real crisp pieces”. The Irish potato giant Tayto has released the bar in a limited edition of only 480,000, and it has become a hot commodity on eBay, where bars are selling for several times their original price. “It’s genius,” said Professor Barry Smith, taste researcher at the University of London. “The human brain likes contrast in taste and texture — this has both.” Not everyone was convinced. “It actually tasted like sick,” said one dissatisfied customer. A Japanese man whose dream was to live as an animal has had his wish fulfilled by a company that specialises in highly realistic costumes. Thanks to his dog suit, which cost around £12,600 and took 40…

RUSSIA Some Western sanctions are welcome ones Gazeta (Moscow) Think ordinary Russians are angry about the international sanctions targeting their countrymen’s yachts? Think again, says Anastasia Mironova. Most of us are actually delighted by the efforts of other countries to financially“disembowel our oligarchs”. Why? Because they’re still traumatised by the economic chaos the oligarchs helped unleash following the collapse of the Soviet Union. True, a minority of Russians used that period to acquire huge wealth, buying up state assets at knock-down prices. But for most, the 1990s were a time of woe, when people were“killed in the alley for a fur hat” or driven to suicide by poverty. So those who recall that period “rejoice” at the sight of oligarchs getting their comeuppance. Likewise, ordinary Russians are“hooting triumphantly” at the…

Is President Biden confused, or is he ditching decades of US foreign policy? That’s what everybody is asking in the wake of his latest remarks about Taiwan, said Stephen Collinson on CNN. In Tokyo this week, during his first presidential tour of East Asia, Biden told a reporter that the US would intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan. “That’s the commitment we made,” he said. The US has actually made no such commitment. For 43 years, it has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity”. This has involved both acknowledging (but not endorsing) Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China, and pledging to help the island defend itself with US-made weapons, while remaining deliberately vague about whether American/US forces would be deployed. Biden is “a master of the verbal muddle”,…

A sharp rise in cases, advice to selfisolate, talk of contact tracing. “It’s all starting to sound eerily familiar,” said the London Evening Standard. The first case of monkeypox was reported in the UK on 7 May. By the middle of this week, there had been 71 here, and further cases had been confirmed in countries across Europe, as well as in Australia and the US. This outbreak is very unusual, said Ed Yong in The Atlantic. Caused by a virus similar to smallpox, monkeypox is mainly only seen in eastern and central Africa; and previous cases outside Africa have tended to be linked to international travel. It is concerning that this time, chains of human transmission are forming. Even so, monkeypox is not Covid: the world is not back…

For most of its “excruciating” final day, the US PGA Championship being played at Tulsa, Oklahoma, looked as if it would end in the first-ever major victory for a Chilean golfer, said James Corrigan in The Daily Telegraph. Mito Pereira, the world No. 100, began his final round nine under par – three shots ahead of the competition – and clung onto the lead for virtually the whole day. Still one shot ahead at the 18th, he needed only a par for victory. Instead, he “found the water off the tee and could only manage a double-bogey”. That relegated him to joint third, and as a result the tournament went to a three-hole play-off between the Americans Justin Thomas and Will Zalatoris. Thomas, the former world No. 1, who had…

To The Times Your argument that the identity of the MP recently arrested (but not charged) on allegations of serious sexual offences should be disclosed is plausible, but likely to lead to dreadful unintended consequences if implemented. That is because the mere fact of the allegation (even if the man is never charged) is likely to lead to the mob action that we have often seen: his family will be trolled, his children jeered and bullied, and his home may well be attacked. This is irrespective of any onslaughts on the man himself, who is presumed to be innocent (but not by the mob). If the man is eventually charged, then the public interest will of course require his identification, irrespective of the effects on him and his family. But…

by Cressida Connolly Viking 288pp £14.99 The Week Bookshop £11.99 Cressida Connolly’s “haunting” novel centres on “two shocking bereavements, separated by more than a century”, said Anthony Quinn in The Observer. The first occurs on the “battlefield in the Crimea, where Captain William Gale cuts a lock of hair from the head of his dead younger brother, Algie – a memento for their parents”. The second takes place in Cornwall in 1977, when one of Gale’s descendants, a mild-mannered Australian teenager, visits his cousins in England, and is initiated into drugs and sex. With great delicacy, and a “superbly noticing eye”, Connolly draws connections between these events, showing how “fragments of the past overlay the present”. Few writers today are as adept at extracting “such intricate, compelling drama from close-knit…

With Mia’s GCSEs looming, Will is sure she’ll be the first in the family to go to university. Mia later confesses to Stella that the pressure of expectation is getting to her. At Stella’s urging, Mia opens up to Will, who reassures her that he’ll always be proud of her. Accusations fly when Chris, Alice and Brian meet a forensic accountant for the Home Farm valuation; Chris says Brian’s hiding assets, Brian calls him a parasite. Afterwards, Alice tries to reassure Chris, but he’s adamant about getting his fair share. Lily winds up Freddie, insisting he’s got more to learn at Lower Loxley; they make a bet. Will takes Mia to the Orangery after her exams, but there’s nasty sniping between her and Chelsea. Roy accepts the Grey Gables job…

This is the ultimate Thai comfort food, says John Chantarasak. It’s one of those “anything goes” kind of dishes, which is one of the reasons I love it, and though this recipe uses beef, it is often made with chicken, pork or seafood. Holy basil isn’t the easiest herb to source, but sweet Thai basil is popping up more and more on supermarket shelves. Serves 2 2 tbsp oyster sauce 1 tbsp light soy sauce 1 tbsp fish sauce 1 tsp caster sugar 6 bird’s eye chillies 2 tbsp chopped garlic 1 tsp salt 6 tbsp vegetable oil 2 large eggs 220g minced beef 3 tbsp fine green beans, cut into 3cm pieces 3 tbsp beef stock or water 40g holy or Thai basil, leaves picked • In a small…

Manorbier Castle, Pembrokeshire This Norman castle above a beautiful beach is usually open to the public, but you have it to yourself if you stay here. There are three cottages and Castle House, which sleeps 12 (from £650/night, manorbiercastle.co.uk). Overlooking the River Teifi in Wales, Cardigan Castle, Ceredigion has medieval battlements and Regency gardens to explore. There are four self-catering apartments and some b&b rooms (four nights from £612, cardigancastle.com). Tiverton Castle, Devon, built in 1106, is a mix of romantic ruins, walled gardens and the castle itself; there are three self-catering flats, plus two houses to let (three nights from £350, tivertoncastle.com). Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland Perched on a volcanic outcrop, this Norman keep has three self-catering properties, including the new clocktower, which sleeps five, with views of Bamburgh Sands…

Airbnb/Klarna: tech retrenchment In a symbolic retreat, Airbnb is closing its domestic business in China indefinitely after six years in the country, said Deirdre Bosa on CNBC. In recent years, stays in China have accounted for just 1% of the home rental company’s revenue, in the face of mounting competition from domestic players. But the pandemic has hastened the decision. With no end to Chinese lockdowns and travel restrictions in sight, it decided to pull the plug. A long-time member of the tech unicorn club, Airbnb floated in 2020 and, although “shares have fallen more than 30% this year amid a broader sell-off in tech stocks”, it’s still “trading well above” its IPO price. Many others have been less fortunate. The latest tech segment to feel the heat, said Lex…

The mirage of full employment Larry Elliott The Guardian The message from the Government is clear, says Larry Elliott: the “booming labour market” is “the silver lining to the dark cloud hanging over the economy”. There are now “more job vacancies than there are people officially classified as out of work”. Still, there are two big problems with this idea that “Britain has returned to the balmy days of postwar full employment”. The first is that job losses will likely rise as recession looms. The second is that the “narrative only holds true for the better-off parts of the country”. Indeed, a study by Sheffield Hallam University into Britain’s “hidden unemployed” (defined as people who are on incapacity benefits, who would be working in a full-employment economy) suggests an unemployed…