Table of contents for 1433 in The Week

What happened Dominic Raab resigned as deputy prime minister and justice secretary last week after an independent inquiry concluded that his treatment of civil servants had, in some cases, amounted to bullying. Having heard from 60 witnesses, Adam Tolley KC upheld two of eight formal bullying complaints levelled against Raab. He concluded that in his previous role as foreign secretary, Raab had acted in “intimidating” fashion with “unreasonably and persistently aggressive conduct”, and that this involved an “abuse or misuse of power”. He also found that Raab’s consistently “abrasive” behaviour in meetings at the Ministry of Justice had been experienced as bullying by some officials, although Raab hadn’t intended to cause distress. In a defiant resignation letter, Raab said that the bar for bullying had been set too low, and…

“The phrase ‘where do you even start?’ comes to mind,” said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times. Last week, the veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott wrote an exceptionally ill-considered letter to The Observer. In it, she took issue with a column in the paper written by Tomiwa Owolade, who had argued that racism is “not a black and white issue”: that in the UK, Jewish, Traveller and Irish people all suffer from it. Abbott stated that, actually, these people merely experienced “prejudice”. “It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice,” she wrote, but this is quite different from racism. Abbott went on to mention historical instances of anti-black oppression which they did not suffer, such as being “manacled…

The traditional cuppa, with news that Britons now spend more on speciality teas, such as ginger and green tea, than they do on black tea. Sales of PG Tips and the like stand at £340.8m a year, whereas those of speciality teas are worth £345.5m. Twitter users, with the removal of blue checks from verified accounts. Owner Elon Musk had been threatening to remove the free verification process for months, to encourage users to pay for a subscription. He was warned that this would cause an exodus of high-profile users, and days later, many VIPs found that they’d been given their checks back, whether they’d wanted them or not. French cuisine, after new figures showed that the French spent 26% more at fast food outlets last year than they did…

Four in ten adults in England say they have delayed or gone without the NHS dental treatment they needed. Of those, 53% said they did so because the treatment cost too much, and 34% said it was because they couldn’t get an appointment. British Dental Association Only 32% of 18- to 24-year-olds in the UK think the country should retain the monarchy. 38% think the UK should have an elected head of state. Among adults aged over 65, 78% support the monarchy, while 15% would rather the UK had an elected head of state. YouGov/BBC Panorama Support for the SNP has dropped to 38%, down from 43% in March and from 50% in December. YouGov/The Daily Telegraph…

Five hundred days in a cave Back in November 2021, the Spanish athlete Beatriz Flamini was lowered 70 metres beneath the Earth’s surface, and left in a cave outside Granada. She celebrated her 49th birthday in it, then her 50th; and last week, having spent 500 days alone, she finally emerged – having had, she told the world’s press, an “excellent” time. She spent her days exercising, drawing, and knitting hats, while being monitored by a team of scientists, none of whom were allowed to talk to her. The trick to thriving in the cave, she learnt, was to live in the present. “I was where I wanted to be, and so I dedicated myself to it,” she said. “I got on very well with myself.” She read 60 books,…

The coronation of Elizabeth II, on 2 June 1953, was “the most magnificent and affecting royal ceremonial of the century”, according to her biographer Ben Pimlott. It came as a welcome respite during postwar austerity: at a time when rationing was still in place, every British household was granted an extra 1lb of sugar and 4oz of margarine. Despite patchy weather, including snow in some places, street parties were held up and down the country. Almost three million people came to London for the day, and some 8,000 dignitaries attended the three-hour-long service. Elizabeth, just 27 at the time, was dressed in a satin gown designed by Norman Hartnell, trailing an 21ft ermine Robe of Estate. During the service the future King Charles III, then four, looked decidedly bored. What…

An 800-calorie-a-day soup and shake diet can reverse type 2 diabetes, a study has found. In the landmark trial, people who stuck to the radical diet, and kept the weight off, were free of symptoms five years later, and no longer needed to take medicines such as metformin tablets or insulin injections. The follow-up results from the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial pave the way for tens of thousands of patients to be prescribed the diet on the NHS. “This result is wildly important,” said Prof Roy Taylor of the University of Newcastle, who led the study. “We had shown that weight loss is highly effective, but the question had always been – how long will that benefit last?” It now seems it could be “permanent and lifelong”, provided people do…

No one who has visited a supermarket lately will have been surprised by the UK’s latest inflation figures, said the Evening Standard. Last week, the Office for National Statistics revealed that food and drink prices had risen by a staggering 19.2% in the year to March, their steepest rate since 1977. Some staples, such as sugar, milk and cheese, are up more than 30%. The headline rate for the consumer price index was 10.1% – a tiny bit lower than it was in February, but higher than many analysts had anticipated. It means the UK has now recorded double-digit inflation for seven months in a row, and leaves us with the third-highest rate in the G20 group of leading economies, behind only Argentina and Turkey. “When it comes to price…

“If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”Charles Dickens, quoted on Lawfare “Finance: the art of passing currency from hand to hand until it finally disappears.”Robert W. Sarnoff, quoted in Forbes “A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.”Saki, quoted on The Knowledge “To live in Australia permanently is rather like going to a party and dancing all night with one’s mother.”Barry Humphries, quoted in The Metro “Man is least himself in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.”Oscar Wilde, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “The benefit of the doubt is the most precious commodity in politics.”John Major, quoted in The Observer “Purism is the best cover-up for mediocrity.”Harry Belafonte, quoted in The New York Times “Dreaming, after…

To The Times Reading Adam Tolley’s report, it is hard to see why it would merit the sacking of Dominic Raab; one cannot help but wonder how long Margaret Thatcher would have lasted had she been in power today. I think most of us can largely agree on what constitutes bullying, but sadly we are being driven by a generation that sees a raised voice as abuse, and considers sloppy work to not be due any 0. Christopher Jackson, Harrogate, North Yorkshire To The Guardian Dominic Raab blames “activist civil servants” for his downfall. Rightly, the former Whitehall mandarins Simon McDonald and Bob Kerslake have dismissed this conspiracy theory. Raab’s fall from grace is just the latest example of macho Brexit fantasies about how the world should be colliding with…

by Diana Evans Chatto & Windus 352pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99 “Diana Evans’s last novel, Ordinary People, followed two black middle-class couples in contemporary London” as they “navigated the disillusionments of midlife”, said Elizabeth Lowry in The Daily Telegraph. Her new novel alights on the same four characters a few years later, all now unhappily divorced. One man, Michael, has taken up with a “sexy singer”, but still spends much of his time “yearning” for his ex, Melissa. The other man, Damian, is pursuing an “exciting single existence”, but leaves “anger and confusion in his wake”. The two women, meanwhile, are both made “distraught” by their teenage children’s problems. The message of this “compassionate and sharp” novel is that it’s dangerous to disassociate yourself from the past. Evans occasionally…

Andreas Schulze at Sprüth Magers Andreas Schulze (b.1955) is a singular presence in German contemporary art. Whereas many of his artist compatriots adopt an uncompromisingly serious, conceptual stance, Schulze delights in the pictorially silly, harking back to Sigmar Polke with his drawings of floating sausages and blob-like legs. Far from being a sort of Teutonic Beryl Cook, however, he is a painter of disciplined and decidedly unheimlich daftness. This exhibition, Land’s End, which brings together works from the 1980s with a selection of more recent pieces, is a fun introduction. One older charcoal drawing sees an armada of flying saucers rushing out from the frame, looking for all the world like little emoji excreta; a new example, the mischievously titled Untitled (Chelsea Flowers) sees bizarre, multicoloured, golf-club-shaped forms erupt from…

A quiche fit for a king? “From coronation chicken to platinum pudding, royal occasions demand a signature dish,” said Caroline Davies in The Guardian. And last week, Buckingham Palace unveiled the one that has been created to mark King Charles’s coronation. Developed by royal chef Mark Flanagan, “coronation quiche” contains spinach, cheddar, broad beans and tarragon, and uses lard in its pastry, though this can easily be altered for vegetarians. The palace hopes it will be the centrepiece of “Big Lunch” celebrations on 6 May. With its vegetable-focused, seasonal filling, the quiche ticks many of the right boxes, said Felicity Cloake in the same paper. And it’s perfectly tasty. But I’d suggest a few modifications. Make twice the amount of pastry stipulated (or you’ll struggle to fill the flan case);…

• Be aware of your senses – including touch and smell – when you’re trying to form a lasting memory. It will help by involving other brain areas. • Put things you are trying to remember into a framework, such as a story or a rhyme. Use associations as this requires concentration and attendance, two brain activities that lead to enhanced memory. • Practise thinking like a US Navy Seal; they always assess their surroundings, including locations of doors and windows, in case they need to make an escape, and/or have to be able to describe them later. • To help remember a string of numbers, try chunking them into groups of threes and fours, like with a telephone number. • You will remember information better if you look at…

Barry Humphries 1934-2023 During an appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2009, Barry Humphries declared that he would be happy if his obituaries made no mention of Dame Edna Everage, the monstrous Melbourne housewife he had created half-a-century earlier. Some hope, said The Times. True, Dame Edna wasn’t his only alter ego: there was also Sir Les Patterson, the boorish Australian cultural attaché, with his filthy suits, nicotine-stained dentures and much discussed “trouser snake”, and the terminally dreary Sandy Stone. Nor were these satirical creations Humphries’ only achievements. He was also an accomplished writer and artist, and a bibliophile who counted John Betjeman among his friends. But the housewife superstar from Moonee Ponds – with her lilac bouffant hair, rhinestone cat-eye spectacles, outrageous frocks and “hello possums” greeting – had…

Apple has really put the cat among the pigeons, said Helena Kelly on DailyMail.com. As US banks roil from the worst turmoil in a generation, the tech giant has calmly strolled onto the scene, brandishing a best-paying savings account. The “competitive” 4.15% deal, co-launched with Goldman Sachs, is billed as being “ten times the average US savings rate” and takes Apple, which first joined forces with Goldman to launch Apple Card in 2019, “deeper into the banking sector”, at a time when hundreds of billions of dollars of fleeing deposits are up for grabs. The question for established banks, said the FT, is “how worried they should be about a tech company with 1.2 billion iPhone users, a $2.6trn market cap and a history of disruptive innovation making moves onto…

“Each earning season comes with new buzzwords,” said Schumpeter in The Economist. Right now it’s “generative artificial intelligence”. Bosses have begun “salivating over the potential” of tools such as ChatGPT “to turbocharge productivity”. But how are things actually shaping up? There’s no shortage of tools…* On the back of ChatGPT, Microsoft has launched a blizzard of updates “that will allow desk jockeys to offload tasks from drafting emails and summarising documents to writing computer code”. Google is likewise souping-up its suite, as are Adobe, Salesforce and Bloomberg. Start-ups such as Harvey, a ChatGPT-like legal assistant, and Jasper, a writing aid, are coming thick and fast. …or applications* Insurer Zurich is using a customised version of ChatGPT to simplify lengthy claims documents. Toymaker Mattel is designing new playthings using Dall-E, which…

Bernard Arnault “Is there anything that can take the wind out of LVMH’s sails,” asked Cantillon in The Irish Times. “By the looks of it, no.” The French luxury titan built by Bernard Arnault has just become the first European company to surpass $500bn in market value – on the back of booming sales in China and the strengthening euro. It caps “a remarkable few weeks” for Arnault, 74 – the wily “wolf in cashmere”, as a rival once dubbed him. Earlier this month, his personal fortune shot through the $200bn mark – cementing his lead over Elon Musk as the world’s richest person. Annoyingly for him, though, this has only intensified speculation about the company’s succession. “It is likely to be a family affair,” said Hannah Boland in The…

What happened The RAF was scrambling to airlift stranded British citizens out of war-ravaged Sudan this week, before a 72-hour ceasefire between the country’s rival military factions was due to end on Thursday. UK special forces had rescued dozens of British diplomats and their families from the capital Khartoum over the weekend, but up to 4,000 British nationals had been left behind; some said that they had been “abandoned”, with no consular assistance. By Wednesday, 300 had been flown out from a small desert airport. Despite the ceasefire, fighting continued between the Sudanese armed forces, led by the country’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Force (RSF), a paramilitary group led by Sudan’s vice-president, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. More than 400 people, many of them civilians, have…

A company in France is offering deep-pocketed fine diners the chance to eat a meal while floating 15 miles above ordinary mortals – in a “luxury pressurised capsule” suspended from a huge, gas-filled balloon. The Michelin-star-quality lunch, at the edge of the stratosphere, costs from €120,000 and lasts three hours (plus 180 minutes’ journey time). Flights are scheduled to begin in 2025. A survey of more than 400 undergraduates at Cambridge University has found that nearly half of them – 47% – have used the AI chatbot ChatGPT, or an equivalent, during their studies. Of those who said they’d used the software, 40% had deployed it for assessed work, and 7% said they plan to use it while sitting online exams.…

The Government was due to take the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to court this week, in an attempt to block the strike it has planned for 2 May. Health Secretary Steve Barclay told the union that the final day of its 48-hour strike in England, which is due to start at 8pm on 30 April, was unlawful as its legal mandate for action would by then have expired. The RCN’s ballot of its members last autumn gave it six months in which to stage strikes; the dispute rests on whether this period ends at midnight on 1 May, or on 2 May. The strike was called earlier this month, after RCN members rejected a pay offer from the Government.…

Paris Diplomat row: China’s top diplomat in Paris caused consternation across Europe last week, by asserting on French TV that countries of the former Soviet bloc were not sovereign nations. They do not have “effective status” under “international law”, said ambassador Lu Shaye, because there is a lack of any “international agreement to solidify their status”. He also cast doubt on Ukraine’s claim to Crimea. His comments were immediately criticised by senior officials in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, as well as in Kyiv. The incident has cast in doubt China’s ability to act as potential mediator for peace in Ukraine. Villanueva de Jiloca, Spain Repopulation: The birth of a baby girl in a remote village in Aragon has been greeted with ecstatic headlines in the Spanish press: it’s being seen…

“I’ve been puzzled by one assumption made by Adam Tolley KC’s independent report into Dominic Raab’s alleged bullying: that making a subordinate feel ‘insecure’ must be bad management. Really? Don’t we sometimes need to be kept on our toes? Doesn’t the whole theory of capitalist competition rest upon the energising effect of not being able to take one’s situation for granted. The late Charles Wilson, the Times editor, was famous for calling one subordinate ‘Fingertips’. The poor chap inquired why. ‘Because that’s what you’re hanging on by,’ replied Wilson. I understand the employee was still in post years later.” Matthew Parris in The Times…

An intelligence set to transform our politics John Oxley The New Statesman We’ve heard a lot about the likely impact of artificial intelligence on our jobs, says John Oxley, but think what it’s going to do to elections. The printing press; email; social media – the rise of each new technology has had major political consequences. Barack Obama triumphed in the so-called “e-mail” election of 2008. Vote Leave’s success was partly due to its Facebook campaign. AI will be no exception. In bringing together a mass of data, it will hugely increase a party’s ability to identify sympathetic voters and tailor messages on an individual basis. The Democrats have already pioneered the strategy: in the 2022 midterms they used AI to solicit donations in a “small money” campaign that delivered…

If you need further evidence of just how heated America’s culture war has grown, said Emily Stewart on Vox, have a look at the video that went viral in which Kid Rock, the “bad-ass singer”, can be seen shooting up cases of America’s most popular beer – Bud Light. “Grandpa’s feeling a little frisky today,” says 52-year-old Rock, before grabbing a semi-automatic rifle and spraying the beer cans with bullets. “F**k Bud Light and f**k Anheuser-Busch,” he exclaims, before signing off to viewers with: “Have a terrific day.” Rock isn’t the only one to have turned his fury on Anheuser-Busch, said Amanda Holpuch in The New York Times. Its executives have received bomb threats; there have been widespread calls for a boycott; country singer Travis Tritt dropped all AB brands…

The hunt for a male Pill More than 60 years after British women got the Pill, scientists are finally making significant progress in the hunt for a similarly safe, reliable and reversible contraceptive drug for men, says The Times. The latest breakthrough centres around a gene called Arrdc5. In experiments involving mice, a team at Washington State University found that when this gene was switched off, male mice became infertile, while in other respects appearing healthy. It turned out that the gene is responsible for a protein crucial in sperm formation. Without it, mice produce fewer sperm, and the sperm they do produce move slowly and are usually misshapen. The same gene is active in human testicles, and Dr Jon Oatley, the senior author of the study published in Nature…

Boris Johnson played a pivotal role in the Leave campaign, but in a new book, Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell reveal that he was shocked – distraught even – when the result of the referendum came through. Having gone to bed for just 20 minutes, he re-emerged in a Brazil football shirt and shorts, and started pacing around saying: “What the hell is happening?” He was upset when he saw David Cameron emerge from No. 10 to tender his resignation, then said: “Oh shit, we’ve got no plan… Holy crap, what will we do?” Later, when he was PM, there were similarly chaotic scenes at No. 10. Although he became frustrated when his wishes were not carried out (“I am the Führer,” he’d reportedly huff, “I am the king”), aides…

It was meant to be Humza Yousaf’s big day, said Alex Massie in The Sunday Times. Last week he gave his first major speech as Scotland’s First Minister and SNP leader, setting out his plans for a “fresh start for Scotland”. But any hope that he might earn some “rare positive headlines” disappeared at breakfast time, when police arrested the SNP’s long-serving treasurer, the MSP Colin Beattie, as part of their investigation into alleged financial chicanery in the party. Yousaf did his best to present his plans to tackle poverty and grow the economy, while also quietly pausing some of Nicola Sturgeon’s controversial policies (such as a “much-criticised” bottle-deposit scheme). But he cut a hapless figure, appearing to be “at the mercy of events rather than in command of them”.…

Football Manchester United will face Manchester City in the final of the FA Cup, after beating Brighton on penalties in the semi-finals. In the Premier League, Newcastle beat Tottenham 6-1. Snooker Kyren Wilson scored a maximum 147 break at the World Championship, to overcome Ryan Day in the first round. But he lost 13-2 to John Higgins in the last 16. Rugby union Saracens’ 45-21 win over London Irish ensures they’ll top the Premiership. They face Northampton in the semi-finals on 13 May.…

First staged in 1990, Brian Friel’s “magnificent memory play” Dancing at Lughnasa has been revived at the National Theatre, said Sarah Crompton on What’s On Stage. And the production, directed by Josie Rourke, is a “glory”. The story is told from the point of view of a man called Michael, who is looking back on a childhood summer in Donegal in 1936. Michael’s unmarried mother and her four unmarried sisters have welcomed home their brother Jack (Ardal O’Hanlon), a priest just back from Uganda. What emerges is a finely calibrated drama about the “small tragedies” of ordinary lives, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. There’s a “Chekhovian” sense of “encroaching forces” outside the home, and of an apparent “stasis” within it, producing an “artful blend of nothing and everything happening…

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton has sold for $6m to a private collector at auction in Switzerland, says The Guardian. Named Trinity, it is thought to be about 65 million years old, and it is made up of 293 bones from three separate dinosaurs, excavated between 2008 and 2013 in Montana and Wyoming. Just over half of its bones come from dinosaurs; the rest are made of plaster and resin. It was bought by a private European collector of modern art and dinosaur relics from its anonymous US seller at the Koller auction house in Zürich. Because it is a composite, palaeontologist Thomas Holtz insisted that it “really isn’t a ‘specimen’ so much as it is an art installation”. Nevertheless, Holtz objects to the private sale of such skeletons, which can…

As Jim and Jazzer discuss a recce of local pubs for the stag night, Jazzer confides that he’s worried about seeing Ed after the George and Brad debacle. After a brief panic involving Jack, anxious Pat insists that they should all move into Bridge Farm while Rob is in the country, but Helen and Lee angrily refuse. Jazzer makes a new friend in the pub. Ian talks to Lee about Rob, and reassures him that Helen is stronger now. Adam has a lead on finding his father – he speaks to Erin, his half-sister; she tells him Paddy just passed away two weeks earlier. Freddie and Elizabeth clash over the trustees’ decision not to sell the controversial painting; Freddie tells David he won’t let it go. Tracy discovers that Jazzer’s…

Serves 4 25g desiccated coconut flavourless cooking oil (sunflower, grapeseed or coconut) 20 medium raw prawns, peeled, tails on, defrosted 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed, or 2 tsp garlic paste 4 long red chillies, deseeded and finely diced 200g green beans, trimmed and cut into 5cm lengths diagonally 1 tbsp kecap manis ½ tsp coconut or brown sugar large pinch of fine sea salt 60g roasted salted cashews • Toast the coconut in a wok or large frying pan over a medium heat for about 2 minutes, shaking the pan frequently, until golden. Transfer the coconut to a plate. • Wipe out the pan and heat 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the prawns in a single layer and cook for 1-2 minutes each side, or until they are just…

The Chiltern Beechwoods are prime bluebell country. Try Hodgemoor Woods, a ten-minute walk from Chalfont St Giles. Kinclaven Bluebell Wood, 11 miles north of Perth, has a spectacular carpet of bluebells in May, plus red squirrels and woodpeckers. Skelghyll Woods, in Ambleside, Cumbria, has some ancient woodland and a Victorian arboretum housing the Lake District’s tallest tree – the 58m “Grand Fir”. There’s a map showing where to find the best bluebells. Take a vintage train ride on the Bluebell Railway in Sussex, to see the bluebells on the trackside embankments. Walks between the four stations along the line nearly all pass through bluebell woods. Bluebells cascade down through the waterside woodland along the coast path at Crawfordsburn Country Park, near Bangor. Captain’s Wood Nature Reserve, set in farmland and…

George Town’s spicy delights Founded by the British in 1786, the Malaysian port of George Town has “a magic all its own”, says Simon Elegant in The New York Times. Its historic heart – a Unesco World Heritage site – is a square mile of “twisting alleys” lined with “wonderfully photogenic” buildings, some of which are now good boutique hotels (try Seven Terraces, The Edison, or the Jawi Peranakan or Cheong Fatt Tze mansions). But as appealing as the local architecture is the food, which mixes Malay traditions with influences from China, India and Indonesia. Among the best places to try this Peranakan cuisine are BaBa Phang, Ceki, Winn’s Café, and Auntie Gaik Lean’s Old School Eatery – a homely diner so good it earned a Michelin star last year.…

Consulting firms: big retreat The failure of EY to push through plans to separate its audit and consultancy arms is “a huge blow” to its bosses, who underestimated just what an uphill climb “Project Everest” would prove, said The Economist. “It looks like vindication” for EY’s Big Four rivals, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, who claimed the move was mistaken. But the commercial logic for splitting these oligopolies is getting “more compelling”. As the weight of business shifts towards consulting, “auditor independence rules” have turned into a real “drag” – and a constant source of bad headlines. EY’s latest upset in Europe, following a two-year ban on auditing public companies in Germany owing to its disastrous audit of Wirecard, is a UK investigation into its handling of the collapsed furniture retailer…

Sunak gives us every reason for optimism… Ambrose Evans-Pritchard The Daily Telegraph “For the first time in what seems like an eternity”, I am starting to feel optimistic about Britain’s economic future, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. So are plenty of others – even if the International Monetary Fund has yet to smell the coffee. A turbocharged “re-rating of UK Inc” is under way in the minds of global investors and economists”. Rishi Sunak’s “fiscal cleansing” has helped, but “the Windsor Framework has been the clincher”. Hammering out a workable deal for Northern Ireland has drained the “poison” from relations with Brussels and Washington. “Britain is no longer being treated – or behaving – as a secessionist apostate. The logic of mutual interest is reasserting itself.” All credit to the PM for…

The week’s best shares Billington Holdings The Mail on Sunday Known for its high-quality engineering, this steel group’s customers include Amazon, Google, and the Hollywood facility Sunset Studios. The order book has doubled and the rising divi reflects soaring profits. Buy. 415p. Greencoat UK Wind Investors’ Chronicle This decade-old renewable energy trust, which invests solely in operating UK wind farms, has an impressive track record offering “moderate” capital growth and inflation-linked dividend rises. Expect volatility. Buy. 159.9p. Henry Boot The Sunday Times The conservatively run property developer, which excels at getting sites through the planning process, has a diverse landbank and strong balance sheet. Prospects are unpredictable, but foundations are strong. Buy. 233p. Integrafin The Times Legacy issues have weighed on the investment platform provider’s credibility. But cost pressures are…

On a blustery February evening in Midtown Manhattan, opposite an unmarked side entrance to the Ed Sullivan Theatre, a crowd of more than 60 people stood crushed against a row of steel barricades. They all knew that at any moment, Harrison Ford would arrive for an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They elbowed and swore at one another, jockeying for position, each clutching a sheaf of photographs for Ford to sign. They weren’t fans – not most of them, anyway. They were “graphers”, who make a living by hounding celebrities for autographs and selling them to the highest bidder. For many of them, graphing is a full-time job. Some have been at it for decades. They can flip a single signature for anywhere from $25 to more…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1360 An Ettinger pass holder 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 8 May. Send it to The Week Crossword 1360, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass holder in assorted colours, which retails at £115, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Charges in battles involving Cuba and America (11) 9 Appraisals for sailors (7) 10 Stop in a black spot (7) 11 Produce paper with introduction missing (5) 12 Gum to suck in poor health? (8) 14 Leaves flight with top team (5,5) 15 Regularly…

Jaffa Cakes, after scientists deemed them the best biscuits for dunking in tea (though legally they’re a cake). In tests, Jaffa Cakes withstood being dunked 116 times, whereas digestives crumbled after six. But not all observers were persuaded by the study. Why, demanded The Times, would anyone need their biscuit to survive repeated dunkings – and, with their fruity filling, “who but a degenerate would wish to dunk a Jaffa Cake in the first place?” Weeds, once the hallmark of a neglected garden, which are now being rebranded by gardeners as “resilient plants”. Four of the 12 gardens at Chelsea Flower Show this year will feature plants previously known as weeds, including brambles and thistles.…

Water companies are to be set legally binding targets to slash the amount of sewage they discharge into the UK’s waterways, the Government has announced. Last year, there were 825 spills a day in England on average, and pressure has been mounting on the Government to tackle the problem. Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey’s plan is to enshrine in law a target set in 2022, to effectively end sewage dumping by 2050, with separate earlier milestones for cutting discharges at bathing sites and special conservation areas.…

Santa Fe, New Mexico Charges dropped: Prosecutors in New Mexico have dropped criminal charges against Alec Baldwin over the fatal on-set shooting of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021. The actor, who is also a producer on the film Rust, had been charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. But two weeks before his trial was due to begin, prosecutors said that “new facts” had come to light that demanded further investigation. “This decision does not absolve Mr Baldwin of criminal culpability and charges may be refiled,” they added. An involuntary manslaughter charge against the film’s weapons supervisor remains in place. Hutchins’ husband reached a settlement with Baldwin last year, but her parents and sister in Ukraine said they would still proceed with their civil suit against the actor. Baldwin…

Bell End Holdings, Little Northern Tart and Middle Finger Promotions were among the 351 risqué company names vetoed by Companies House officials last year. “All applications are carefully considered but we will not register a name which is considered to be offensive,” said a spokesman. Other rejected examples included Quick Screw, Poop Ltd, Stiff Nipples Air Conditioning, Little Pricks Acupuncture, Bad Bitch Boutique and a courier company hoping to register the name About Effing Time. A “gloriously gluttonous” cat that was put up for adoption in America has found a loving new home. Patches, who weighs more than 40lbs – about as much as a five-year-old child – was taken in by an animal shelter in Virginia, which implored the public to find room in their hearts for “the largest…

UNITED KINGDOM Britain is a nation in steep decline Die Welt (Berlin) Whatever has happened to Great Britain, asks Thomas Kielinger. Many Germans used to view the UK as “the model of a proud society living at peace with itself”, guided by “common sense” and its time-honoured institutions. How different things are in the UK today. Having chewed through four prime ministers in seven years, the country is now “dangerously close to internal rebellion”, as strikes by doctors, nurses, teachers and train crews paralyse public services. The middle-classes are “facing impoverishment”, owing to years of austerity and inflation that is well above the eurozone average. As for the young, soaring mortgage rates have left the “quintessentially British expectation” of home ownership out of the reach of many (renting “hurts the…

It came as a disappointment to those awaiting a “blockbuster courtroom drama”, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. In a last-minute deal last week, Fox News paid out a record $787.5m to settle a defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. America’s most watched cable news channel had repeatedly aired false claims that Dominion helped rig the 2020 election to steal victory from Donald Trump. The wonder is that Fox didn’t settle earlier. The release of thousands of internal Fox documents through the pre-trial discovery process established some time ago that its executives and presenters knew perfectly well that the stolen election claims were baseless. Fox has now had to pay for that deceit, but there was no humiliating trial and no apology. The network even had the nerve to…

“A quick thought experiment,” said Alan Martin in The i Paper. If a lorry crashed near your home, and was leaking toxic gases into the atmosphere, would you want to know about it? “Unless you are a terminal contrarian, the answer is probably yes.” That is why the Government has devised a mobile phone emergency alert, which it tested last Sunday. At 3pm, all 4G and 5G mobile phones were due to issue a brief, siren-like sound, and display a message explaining what was happening. It didn’t quite go as planned: many phones on the Three network didn’t sound the alert. But once perfected, this system, which sends signals directly from nearby mobile phone masts, should be far more efficient than sending SMS messages to individual numbers, as during the…

The career of the 30-year-old Dutch long- and middle-distance runner Sifan Hassan has been packed with success, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. She has broken world records and earned numerous titles. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, she achieved the unique feat of winning gold in both the 5,000m and 10,000m and a bronze in the 1,500m. All this from someone who’d never run competitively until she arrived in the Netherlands as a 15-year-old refugee from Ethiopia. Up until last weekend’s London Marathon, however, her CV lacked one thing: a competitive marathon. Amazing, then, that on her first marathon outing, the 30-year-old defied injury – and a near-miss with a motorbike – to triumph over a world-class field. “Not since Pheidippides ran to Athens has there been a more extraordinary…

A union worth saving? To The Guardian Simon Jenkins is right: the move towards Scottish independence is not going away because of the present troubles of the SNP. It is not based on anti-English sentiment. It is born of experience that what England votes for consistently is not what Scots want – be it unregulated markets, ill-considered privatisation or Brexit. That independence will bring economic challenges is certain, but when you look at the achievements of small European countries and consider the natural and intellectual assets of Scotland, Scots should not fear independence. The SNP is just a route to this end. In an independent Scotland it would disappear and take a distinct position in a plural political settlement based, thankfully, on proportional representation. When people like me, who have…

by Mark Hollingsworth Oneworld 320pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 When we think of Cold War espionage, we often envisage “tough-looking blokes scurrying around dilapidated alleyways in Vienna, Berlin or Helsinki exchanging parcels and strange code words”, said Marcus Tanner in The Tablet. Either that, or “James Bond-like escapades in exotic locations, featuring speedboats and beautiful women”. But as Mark Hollingsworth demonstrates in this “entertaining study”, most spying during the Cold War was rather more mundane. Subtitled “How the KGB subverted Western democracies”, Agents of Influence shows that relatively little Soviet espionage “involved trained spies or double agents of the Kim Philby type”. The KGB spent most of its “vast resources” on recruiting susceptible “influencers” – politicians, journalists and other establishment figures who were often lured to the Soviet side…

The premise for this new exhibition is a “weird” one indeed, said Laura Freeman in The Times. On the face of it, the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) have little in common: he was a cosmopolitan modernist, she a visionary mystic; he painted “grids, angles, squares, stripes, a lozenge for a bit of light relief”, she “pastels, petals, threads and rainbows”; his paintings are among the most recognisable in all art history, hers were all but ignored until she was reappraised as an abstract pioneer in recent years. The two never met and were completely unaware of each other’s work. Nevertheless, Tate Modern has brought together dozens of paintings by both artists to highlight the parallels between them. The show argues that…

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, 1886 (Penguin £7.99). One of the great novels about fate. Michael Henchard becomes the mayor with “a past”. And because he hasn’t dealt with his past, it slowly catches up with him, to his own peril. It’s why we can’t ignore this – our past will always haunt us. The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier, 2000 (Simon & Schuster, £9.99). Poitier became a major star of cinema, but this book is about roots and never forgetting who one is. His life was an amazing odyssey, taking him from Cat Island in the Bahamas to America. While he created a character of himself, Poitier never forgot his origins. It’s one of the best autobiographies I have ever read. In Search of Being…

Programmes Dance Passion Liverpool: Find the Feeling The streets of Liverpool become the stage as dancers evoke a day in the life of the city. Sun 30 Apr, BBC4 20:00 (60mins). Charles R: The Making of a Monarch Documentary drawing on decades’ worth of footage of Charles, as he reflects on his passions and responsibilities. Sun 30 Apr, BBC1 20:00 (60mins). Clive Myrie’s Italian Roadtrip The newsreader and presenter starts an epic trip across Italy, beginning in Puglia and following in the footsteps of James Bond. Mon 1, Tue 2 and Wed 3 May, BBC2 18:30 (30mins each). Storyville – Attica: America’s Bloodiest Prison Uprising Powerful account of the 1971 uprising at Attica prison, in New York state, sparked by guards being taken hostage in protest at appalling conditions in…

Relaxing Brazilian retreat A 7-night stay at the Hilton Rio de Janeiro Copacabana, with a sauna and spa complex, costs from £1,753pp room only (incl. Birmingham flights). 020-3386 8411, lastminute.com. Depart 21 October. Chic Moroccan hotel The ancient and modern collide at the intimate Karmela Princesse Riad in Marrakech. From £628pp for 7 nights b&b (incl. Edinburgh flights). 01234-230440, loveholidays.com. Depart 31 May. Norfolk cottage escape A beautiful former Post Office, just a short walk from stunning beaches, is perfect for a family getaway. From £625 for 7 nights self-catering. 01263-715779, norfolkcottages.co.uk. Arrive 28 May. Three nights in New York Enjoy a Hard Rock Hotel experience (“soundwave headboards”), and explore Manhattan. From £1,205pp room only (incl. Manchester flights). 0344-472 9646, virginholidays.co.uk. Depart 9 June. Covid-19: please check government websites for…

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