Table of contents for 1449 in The Week

What happened It was confirmed this week that dissident republicans had obtained reams of sensitive information about the staff of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), following a major data breach. As a result of a botched response to a Freedom of Information request, the surname, initial, rank or grade and department of 10,000 PSNI employees was briefly published online last week. Chief Constable Simon Byrne warned the data could be used for “intimidating or targeting officers and staff”; and this week information from the breach was posted on a Belfast library wall, along with a threat. The Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, urged them to “exercise maximum vigilance”. Separately, analysts warned that data stolen in a cyberattack on the Electoral Commission could be used to…

Concert etiquette, following reports that visitors to the Proms have been involved in noisy arguments over snacks, distracting other audience members. The most recent row erupted at a production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, when a man aggressively took issue with a US tourist for “munching on popcorn”. Witnesses said the man was “unbelievably abusive” to the snacker. “We thought he might pull a knife on him,” said one. Sound sleeping, with pest controllers reporting a 65% year-on-year increase in bedbug infestations in Britain. They blamed the rise on an increase in the popularity of second-hand furniture, and the resurgence in travel and hotel stays as Covid retreated.…

52% of adults in Great Britain support the idea of stripping the Duke of Sussex of his position as fifth in line to the throne. 27% oppose the idea. 21% don’t know. Deltapoll/The Mail on Sunday 46% of voters in Great Britain believe there should be another referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU in the next ten years. 36% think there shouldn’t, and the rest don’t know. Among 2016 Leave voters, 63% think there shouldn’t be another referendum in the next ten years. 70% of 2016 Remain voters believe there should. YouGov 86% of students in England say they feel free to express their “ideas, opinions and beliefs” during their studies. Office for Students/The Guardian…

Andrew Malkinson’s vow On the day that Andrew Malkinson was released from prison after serving 17 years for a rape he didn’t commit, his lawyer drove him to the beach for something he had not experienced in all that time: fresh air. “You don’t get wind in prison,” he told Jenny Johnston in the Daily Mail. “The stale air of institution seeps into your very being.” When he was sent to jail in 2004, he assumed that someone – a kindly prison officer, perhaps – might see, from his demeanour and his own account of his life, that he could be innocent. He was wrong. “The sex offenders are the lowest of the low,” he says. “[Prison officers] treat you as something they have found under their shoe.” Everything in…

A supermarket in New Zealand that is using AI to generate meal plans for its customers found that its app has produced some unusual recipes. When users began inputting a range of ingredients into Pak‘nSave’s “Savey Meal-Bot”, they discovered that it made cheery suggestions ranging from “Oreo vegetable stir fry” to “bleach-infused rice surprise”, “poison bread sandwiches” and a recipe for chlorine gas called “aromatic water mix”. It also proposed a “mysterious meat stew” requiring “500g human-flesh, chopped”, and “methanol bliss” – a kind of turpentine-flavoured French toast. A Texas woman was left with serious wounds when she was attacked first by a snake that fell from the sky, then by a hawk that swooped down to retrieve its prey. Peggy Jones, 64, was mowing her lawn when the 4ft-long…

ECUADOR The gangsters who threaten our democracy El Comercio (Lima) A political hit in Ecuador is a sober reminder of the threat posed by criminal gangs in Latin America, says El Comercio. Fernando Villavicencio, an anti-corruption campaigner standing for president, was gunned down last week, days before the country’s elections, having recently let it be known that he’d received death threats from a drug cartel. It was the third “horrifying” murder of a politician in Ecuador (where the homicide rate has risen almost five-fold since 2018) in just a few weeks. “Sadly, we’ve already seen this movie”: drug gangs have for some time now threatened to subvert the democratic systems of Colombia, Honduras and Mexico and other Latin American countries. In the run-up to the 2018 Mexican elections, an astonishing…

George Harrison’s mother devotedly replied to thousands of letters sent by her son’s fans; but she didn’t endorse all aspects of Beatlemania, according to one soon-to-be auctioned letter. Replying to a teenager in 1963, Louise Harrison recalled seeing the Beatles perform in Manchester. “I was really disgusted at the way the so-called fans just screamed right through the whole of The Beatles act,” she lamented. “Nobody with any sense would pay and queue for a ticket just to stand on a seat and scream and not hear one sound from the stage. I was really ashamed I was a female.” Asked on X – formerly Twitter – what her last meal would be, Nigella Lawson got stuck in. “Good bread spread with cultured butter and topped with anchovies; spaghetti alle…

“Last year I had a great joke about inflation. But it’s hardly worth it now.”Comedian Amos Gill at the Edinburgh Festival, quoted in The Guardian “Getting mythology wrong is my Hercules ankle.”Comedian Olaf Falafel, ibid “When women gossip, we get called bitchy; but when men do it’s called a podcast.”Comedian Sikisa Bostwick-Barnes, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “I tell you, we are on this Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”Kurt Vonnegut, quoted in The Guardian “If you’re sad, add more lipstick and attack.”Coco Chanel, quoted in the Clayton News Daily “Don’t be so humble – you are not that great.”Golda Meir, quoted on The Knowledge “You need more tact in the dangerous art of giving presents than in any other social action.”William Bolitho, quoted in…

To The Daily Telegraph In 1950, Britain led the Council of Europe in drawing up the European Convention on Human Rights and setting up the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). British lawyers drafted large parts of the convention to provide the European continent with liberties long enjoyed in Britain. However, Winston Churchill insisted that the Strasbourg Court should have no jurisdiction in Britain because we had – and have – no need of it. Our own laws already guaranteed our freedoms. For political reasons, Tony Blair granted the ECHR jurisdiction in Britain through the 1998 Human Rights Act. The main outcomes have been the politicisation of our judiciary and the introduction of new, phoney “human rights” to things like privacy and family life. These rights are routinely abused by…

by Adam Mars-Jones Faber 752pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 During his prolific career, the literary critic Adam Mars-Jones has produced many “short stories, neat little novellas” and “slim” memoirs, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times. But he has also written “three enormous novels” – all about one man: John Cromer. The first, Pilcrow (2008), charted Cromer’s 1950s childhood and “struggles with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis”. In the 733-page Cedilla (2011), Cromer “gains some independence”. Now we have Caret, covering less than a year of its subject’s life, yet running to 752 pages. The books are obscenely long, but they are “something apart”, and offer a “truly original narrative voice”. Like its predecessors, Caret is short on “developments of a standard novelistic kind”, said Paul Genders in Literary Review. There…

Andrew Cranston at Ingleby Gallery Scottish artist Andrew Cranston (b.1969) is one of those painters everyone seems to love – and not without reason. As with the work of his friend and compatriot Peter Doig, Cranston’s pictures seem rich in personal symbolism. Yet he has a precision and dry humour that are entirely his own. Never a Joiner brings together nine new paintings, which take us from a Picasso-indebted view of his Aberdeen studio (complete with a half-eaten can of Heinz beans) to a darkened room from which a small boy gazes out towards an ocean liner; whether the aperture is a window or an illuminated vitrine is left to the imagination. The dream-likeness of the compositions and their strange titles – fragments of song lyrics, context-free questions – create…

Lark 6A Angel Hill, Bury St Edmunds (01284-652244) Housed in a building that was once a bus shelter, this 20-seat restaurant in Bury St Edmunds is “not a glamorous space”, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. “Instead, all the glamour is on the plate.” The “smallish plates” that emanate from the “tiny kitchen” startle with their ingenuity. Crunchy radishes are served with a “silky quenelle of whipped lardo”. A courgette flower is stuffed with baba ghanoush before being “expertly tempuraed”. Terrific hash browns are served two ways: either topped with a tartare of muntjac and radicchio, or with the garlicky “wonder-dip that is mojo rojo”. More impressive still is the “special” – rabbit shank and black pudding pie – which turns out to be the “love child of a wellington…

● Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. A red sky at sunset means the sky is clear to the west, allowing the Sun’s light through. Since the weather in Britain normally arrives from the west, a red evening sky is an indicator that the short-term forecast is good. ● Test the wind. One of the most dependable signs that a major weather change is on the way is a change in wind direction, as this tends to precede the arrival of a new weather front. ● Look at the night sky. Stars twinkle when the light they emit is disrupted on reaching Earth’s atmosphere. Moisture in the air can cause this disruption – and is indicative of bad weather coming. So if the stars are still, that suggests good weather,…

SoftBank/WeWork/Arm: flotation politics News that the office-space disruptor WeWork is “on the rocks again” has got investors “in a frenzy”, said Rachyl Jones in Fortune. Since the firm warned of “substantial doubt” about its “ability to continue as a going concern”, its battered stock has slumped again. Once valued at $47bn, WeWork is now worth around $275m, said The Economist – making it one of the “worst bets in recent years” for main backer SoftBank, whose Vision Fund has just “racked up another heavy net loss”. Morale is so low at Masayoshi Son’s Japanese tech venture investor that its new mantra, according to CFO Yoshimitsu Goto, is: “We are investing timidly, with fear in our hearts.” A good deal is riding on pulling off a successful float of Arm, the…

The rouble crisis is a big test for Putin Ambrose Evans-Pritchard The Daily Telegraph “The long-awaited currency crisis has finally hit Russia,” says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. The rouble, down 40% since last November, briefly fell through the psychologically significant 100-per-dollar threshold this week. The central bank has raised interest rates to 12%, but has failed to restore confidence. No amount of propaganda can disguise the fact that “Russia is running out of usable hard currency” – the clearest signal yet that the $60 oil price cap and Western sanctions are working. Last year’s bonanza has evaporated. Putin is still selling huge volumes of oil, but his Indian and Chinese buyers “know he is a distressed seller and are driving a hard bargain”. The Kremlin has resorted to “raiding private companies” to…

What happened A government drive to show that it was getting to grips with illegal Channel crossings ended in disarray last week. On Thursday, 755 migrants made it onto British soil, the highest daily total of the year so far. The next day, the Bibby Stockholm, the barge in Dorset on which 39 asylum seekers had only just been housed, had to be evacuated after legionella bacteria was discovered in its water system. On Saturday – in a grim coda to what had been dubbed “small boats week” – a packed dinghy sank off the coast of France, leading to the death of six Afghan migrants. Rishi Sunak insisted this week that he was still committed to using the Bibby Stockholm to house asylum seekers. He said it was unfair…

Five books were removed from sale on Amazon last week because they appeared to have been written using AI and were published under an established author’s name. The books were attributed to Jane Friedman, who believes AI software was trained to mimic her work using her publicly available writing. She found five fraudulent titles on sale, including How to Write and Publish an eBook Quickly and Make Money. Berlin Airport has recruited two dachshunds, a labrador and a mongrel to soothe stressed passengers. Addy, Benny, Emi and Pepper first greeted travellers in the departure lounge earlier this month, and proved so popular they will now be returning to offer emotional support on a regular basis.…

Three Bulgarian nationals suspected of spying for Russia while living in the UK have been arrested and charged, police said this week. The defendants were detained in February after a major national security investigation, and charged with possessing fake identity documents with “improper intention”. They reportedly held passports and identity cards for several countries including Italy, Slovenia, Greece and France. All three defendants are due to go on trial at the Old Bailey in London in January. Two other people have been arrested but not charged.…

Wintzenheim, France Gîte fire: Eleven people have died in a fire at a holiday home for disabled people near Colmar in France’s Haut-Rhin department. The private gîte – a converted barn in the village of Wintzenheim – had been hired by a group from Nancy for the holidays. Authorities in Colmar said there were 28 people in the building when the fire broke out at 6.30am. Firefighters arrived not long after, and soon brought the blaze under control, but by then it had already engulfed the upper floor, where all 11 victims – ten adults with learning disabilities and one supervisor – perished. Police are investigating. Barcelona, Spain Nudist campaign: Naturists in Catalonia have written to the region’s government requesting measures to protect the character of its 50 or so…

“When did we start to think of society primarily as a collection of age cohorts? Britain is represented now as a block strafed with three great horizontal divides: one canyon between 58- and 59-year-olds (generation X vs. boomers), a second between the ages of 42 and 43 (millennials vs. gen X), and yet another between 26 and 27 (gen Z vs. millennials). Within each block, by contrast, you will be told that a group encompassing some 15 years and all levels of society is practically homogenous. They are accorded the same agenda, the same advantages and disadvantages, and even – like a new branch of astrology – the same personality.” Martha Gill in The Observer…

Estimates of King Charles’s private wealth vary widely. The Sunday Times Rich List team put it at £600m this year, while a Guardian investigation concluded he was worth closer to £1.8bn (it counted the Duchy of Lancaster as to some extent a private asset). In some cases, there’s a clear line between what’s owned “in the right of the Crown” and what’s owned by him: Buckingham and Kensington Palaces are public property, while Sandringham and Balmoral are private. But there’s a large grey area, especially concerning official gifts received before 1995, when rules were laid down. As a result, it’s not clear, for instance, who owns every item in the royal art and stamp collections, which are both among the most valuable in the world. Horses are another grey area.…

America’s shocking mortality rate David Wallace-Wells The New York Times America is a deadly place, says David Wallace-Wells. Just how deadly is clear from a recent largescale study by mortality researchers. It showed that, since the turn of the millennium, roughly half-a-million more people in America have died each year than would have died, on average, in equivalent economies. It’s a growing gap that reflects a grim US “exceptionalism” in all sorts of areas. In 2020, for instance, the EU reported 5,800 overdose deaths in a population of about 440 million; the US, with a smaller population of 330 million, reported an astonishing 68,000. In 2021, there were 26,000 murders in the US, compared with 300 in Italy; and more than 5,000 fatal workplace accidents, compared with 123 in England.…

This July was the hottest on record in terms of air temperatures. And it also marked a new high for sea surface temperatures. On the 31st of the month, the global average reached 20.96°C, beating the peak of 20.95°C in 2016. The difference is fractional, but scientists have predicted that sea temperatures will keep rising, tumbling more records. El Nino – the natural warming of the surface waters in the eastern Pacific that occurs every few years – is likely to be playing a part in driving temperatures up. But climate change is almost certainly a factor too, Dr Samantha Burgess, of the EU’s climate-monitoring programme, told the BBC. As well as threatening coastal habitats and marine life (and fishing and tourist industries), warming sea temperatures could speed up climate…

Harry Kane has always seemed “a humble, normal sort of footballer”, a slightly geeky and gawky “sporting genius”, said James Gheerbrant in The Sunday Times – not the sort of man you’d expect to be the star of the Premier League’s biggest transfer melodrama. Bayern Munich had courted Tottenham Hotspur’s record goalscorer for months, reasoning that his goals could propel the perennial Bundesliga champions to Champions League glory. And Kane – with a year left on his contract and no intention of signing a new one – had made up his mind to join a club where he could compete for the game’s biggest prizes. Even so, this wasn’t a straightforward deal, said Charlie Eccleshare on The Athletic. Spurs played hardball until the end, even stalling when Kane was holed…

World Cup Sweden will play Australia in a third-place playoff on Saturday. Rugby union England beat Wales 19-17 at Twickenham, in a win that was marred by a red card for captain Owen Farrell. The fly-half had been expected to miss England’s opening World Cup game against Argentina through suspension, but a disciplinary hearing determined that the tackle did not meet the threshold for a ban. Boxing Anthony Joshua beat Robert Helenius by a knockout in their heavyweight bout in London.…

by Anna Funder Viking 464pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 From dishwashers in Paris to Wigan’s coalminers, George Orwell “loved to immerse himself in the lives of the downtrodden”, said Fiona Sturges in The Independent. Yet as Anna Funder shows in this “eye-opening” book, one type of exploitation escaped his notice: Orwell “gave scant thought” to the oppression of women, in which he himself colluded. The biggest victim of this was his first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, to whom he was married from 1936 until her death in 1945. Not only was she pivotal to his writing – she typed his manuscripts and edited early drafts of his books – she gave over her life to domestic drudgery, while he worked, travelled and had affairs. Yet “never once” did he even…

Tim Sheader’s lavish revival of this landmark 1983 musical – about a gay Saint-Tropez nightclub owner and his drag artist partner – is a “total joy”, said Miriam Gillinson in The Guardian. The costumes dazzle, and the choreography is “slick but – even better – very funny”. Harvey Fierstein’s witty script “still crackles 40 years on”: the farce-style plot involves the couple assuming implausible straight identities to meet their son’s prospective father-in-law, a conservative politician. And Jerry Herman’s “heartfelt score” remains romantic and seductive. It’s an “opportune” moment to revive this joyous show, said Kirsten Grant in The Daily Telegraph. Political efforts in some US states to restrict drag performances mean that the father-in-law’s plans to shut down La Cage “don’t seem so wildly implausible”. Above all, though, the evening…

If you watched Dopesick, the Disney+ drama about America’s opioid addiction epidemic, “it may feel like ‘overdose’ to embark on another”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. “Yet there is a buzzy, frenetic, angry momentum” to Painkiller that, “along with judicious use of music, carries you along”. Matthew Broderick is aged considerably to play Richard Sackler, the chairman of Purdue, the company that “aggressively pushed” a morphine-like painkiller, with disastrous results. Uzo Aduba plays a prosecutor investigating Purdue, who is one of the first to spot the routine overprescription and abuse of the drug. At the heart of the show, though, is family man Glen (Taylor Kitsch), who becomes addicted to OxyContin after being injured at work. Some characters are a bit superficial, but the story of the scandal “never…

Oliver makes an appearance at the Borsetshire Rural Food Fayre, where he tells Ian that there is a vacancy at Grey Gables and offers him the job. Ian agrees to consider it. Helen steps in as a judge at the fayre, but Ian protests when she marks down a rival cheese producer. Ian and Adam discuss Oliver’s offer, and Ian eventually decides to take it: the extra money might help to start his pizza business. Eddie has lost his ferret Marvin, but eventually finds him hiding in his pocket. Ian tells Tom about Helen’s peculiar behaviour at the fayre, but Helen overhears and storms off. Helen asks Tom to tell Fallon that they will not grant her a longer lease on the tea room. Stella and Pip go camping and…

Light and fluffy, this flourless hazelnut chocolate cake from food writer and chef Liberty Mendez’s debut cookbook has a delicious mousse-like texture and is not overly sweet. It’s really dreamy. It also happens to be dairy and gluten free! Serves 8-10 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting 125g, plus 2 tbsp, caster sugar 250g dark chocolate, roughly chopped (dairy free if needed) 100ml olive oil, plus extra for greasing 100ml strong brewed coffee, cooled 1 tsp vanilla paste 1 tsp fine sea salt 6 large eggs, separated 80g ground toasted hazelnuts (if you can’t find any ground toasted hazelnuts, buy some blanched hazelnuts, toast them in a hot frying pan and leave to cool, then blitz them to a powder in a food processor) • Preheat the…

Back Market is a great port of call for anything from laptops and phones to PlayStations. All devices have been checked and refurbished (backmarket.co.uk). Vodafone has a section for refurbished phones on its website, where it offers mostly Apple and Samsung products. It separates them into “pristine” and “great” condition, offers a two-year warranty on pay-monthly phones, and a trade-in offer as well (vodafone.co.uk). Box, which has been in the refurbished game for 26 years, sells a huge variety of products including phones, laptops, fridges and coffee machines. You can save as much as 50% on opened-box and refurbished goods (box.co.uk). You can buy or rent refurbished goods including iPads, games consoles, headphones and speakers on Music Magpie. All items go through a 70-point check and buyers are given a…

Wildlife spotting in Mull Mull, the second-largest of the Inner Hebrides, is “less afflicted by coach-tour logjams” than Skye and has “whopping wildlife”, says Paul Bloomfield in The Daily Telegraph. “Massive golden and white-tailed eagles, wingspans topping two metres, soar above glens grazed by magnificent red deer”; “minke breach waves to the west, joined by bottlenose dolphins and harbour porpoises”. “Somewhat smaller but no less charismatic are the otters and seabirds around Mull’s coast and offshore islands”, particularly Staffa, which is famed for the extraordinary polygonal basalt pipes of Fingal’s Cave. Between taking all this in, you could visit the “venerable” Tobermory Distillery, or “savour a dram in the Mishnish, the legendary live-music pub”. There is “real local spirit”, and Tobermory – familiar to viewers of the children’s BBC TV…

Manju Malhotra An unseemly defenestration at Harvey Nichols? Perish the thought, said Vogue Business. CEO Manju Malhotra is leaving the Knightsbridge fashion emporium after more than 25 years but – contrary to reports of a dispute with her chairman, the Hong Kong tycoon Dickson Poon – the split is said to be “amicable”. Poon’s company, Dickson Concepts, bought Harvey Nichols in 1991 and presided over a glorious revival, aided by the TV comedy Absolutely Fabulous. But reports that it has “lost its fizz, darling” have been circulating for years. The shake-up follows “a challenging period”, said Tamison O’Connor in The Business of Fashion. It lost £4.7m last year and turnover was still 30% below pre-pandemic levels. The owner’s son, Pearson Poon, is stepping into the breach until a new CEO…

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A British philanthropist and former businessman has given almost £29m to promote heritage skills training in the UK and the Commonwealth. Hamish Ogston’s donation, which was made through his charitable foundation, is the largest private single commitment to the heritage training cause ever, and will allow up to 2,700 young people to be trained in skills such as flint knapping, joinery, roofing, carpentry, painting, plastering and stonemasonry. A sheep that was stranded on jagged rocks at the bottom of a cliff in Devon was rescued by an intrepid walker. Chris Oxlade-Arnott, 51, and his wife Jilly passed the sheep when they were on a walk in Woolacombe, but only registered it when Jilly noticed it in one of her photos. With the tide coming in, Chris climbed down the steep…

British consumers, with the news that the UK’s annual inflation rate has dropped to 6.8% in the year to July, down from 7.9% in June (see page 40). However, analysts warned that prices are still rising faster in the UK than in other comparable economies. Rupert Murdoch, who has reportedly begun a new romance, just four months after breaking off his engagement to US radio host Ann Lesley Smith. The media mogul, 92, is said to be in the “early stages” of a relationship with Elena Zhukova, 66, a retired scientist who until 2018 was Roman Abramovich’s mother-in-law. Space tourism, after Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic took its first paying customers to the edge of space. Carrying a crew of six people, including three private passengers, VSS Unity took off from…

A four-day walkout by junior doctors in England came to a close this week. The strike was the fifth staged by junior doctors represented by the British Medical Association, which is calling for a 35% pay rise for its members. The Government has rejected that demand; last month, it announced that junior doctors would receive a pay rise of 6%, along with an additional £1,250 lump sum. Separately, official figures released last week showed that a record 7.6 million people in England were waiting for NHS treatment. Two in five patients had been waiting more than 18 weeks.…

New York City Bankman-Fried jailed: Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was taken to jail last week after a federal judge revoked his bail on grounds of probable witness tampering in the run-up to his trial, scheduled for October. The 31-year-old former billionaire had been under house arrest at his parents’ California home since he was arrested in December on fraud charges stemming from FTX’s collapse. Prosecutors said that last month he “crossed a line” by sharing with a New York Times writer the personal writings of his former employee and romantic partner Caroline Ellison, in which she described feeling “unhappy” in her job and “hurt/rejected” by their breakup. They argued that he did so to discredit Ellison, who is cooperating with prosecutors, and to intimidate…

Clarence Avant, mogul known as the “godfather of black music”, died 13 August, aged 92. Doreen Mantle, actress best known for One Foot in the Grave, died 9 August, aged 97. Robbie Robertson, guitarist and songwriter of The Band, died 9 August, aged 80. Sixto Rodriguez, singer whose career took off after decades in obscurity, died 8 August, aged 81. Adrian Street, Welsh wrestler known as “the sadist in sequins”, died 24 July, aged 82. Desert Island Discs will return in the autumn…

Pondering “the Mississippi Question” John Burn-Murdoch Financial Times Is Britain really as poor as Mississippi, America’s poorest state? It’s a question often raised, as pundits ponder the UK’s relative decline. The answer, says John Burn-Murdoch, is that we haven’t been overtaken yet. On a GDP per capita basis, adjusting for price differences, we’re still about 15% ahead, which puts us in front of five other US states as well. The picture isn’t so rosy, though, if you take London’s output and headcount out of the equation. Doing so lops a mighty 14% off British living standards, putting us behind every US state. This stark disparity sets the UK apart. Amputating Amsterdam from the Netherlands, for instance, would only shave 5% off Dutch living standards. Removing Germany’s most productive city, Munich,…

A new threat from dirty air Pollution and antibiotic resistance are, individually, among the greatest threats to global health: antibiotic-resistant infections kill more than 1.25 million people a year; a further seven million deaths are associated with airborne pollution. Now, a study has found that there may be a link between the two. For the research, scientists obtained data on antibiotic resistance in 116 countries between 2000 and 2018. When they then compared it with levels of harmful PM2.5 particles, a clear pattern emerged – when levels of PM2.5 pollutants rose, so did those of antibiotic resistance. Extrapolating from their findings, they estimate that antibiotic resistance stemming from air pollution may have been responsible for 480,000 premature deaths in 2018. The study, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, did not…

“It is difficult to remember a rugby league story quite like this,” said Aaron Bower in The Observer. Before this week, “little old Leigh” had spent decades in the sport’s “wilderness”, playing in front of tiny crowds and weathering “countless financial crises”. But on Saturday, the Lancashire town “with a population barely exceeding 40,000” took home the sport’s “biggest prize”, the Challenge Cup, beating Hull Kingston Rovers 17-16 in a pulsating final. It means that, for the first time in years, Leigh is now the name “on everyone’s lips” in rugby league land. “Calling it a fairy tale does not even come close.” What a thrilling victory this was, said David Craven in the Sunday Mirror. Leigh had been leading 10-6 with 78 seconds left of normal time when Rovers’…

by Ed Gillett Picador 464pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 You might expect a history of rave culture to be packed with “summer of love nostalgia” and “having-it-large anecdotes from superstar DJs”, said Sukhdev Sandhu in The Observer. But Ed Gillett’s Party Lines isn’t that kind of book. Instead, it is a “shrewd” and “bolshily insurgent” study of the “politics of dancing” – with a focus on the “cycles of social panic” that dancing to music has generated. The “standard creation myth” of British acid house holds that four DJs – Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, Johnny Walker and Nicky Holloway – “saw the light” while on holiday in Ibiza in 1987, and returned to “spread their gospel”, said Victoria Segal in The Sunday Times. Without disputing this version of events,…

“Made-up science is generally much more exciting and dramatic than real science,” said James Marriott in The Times – and “the alarmist misinterpretation of scientific studies is one of the great joys of journalism”. Alas, the science writers Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie are “here to ruin our fun” with a terrific new podcast, The Studies Show, a “Rest-Is-History-but-for-science-style” affair in which they untangle fact from fiction with “wit and passion”. The podcast’s title is a punning reference to a “classic genre” of newspaper article: “studies show that… eating squirrel meat can reduce dementia”; studies show that… “drinking three glasses of vodka a day improves cognitive function” and so on. Early episodes look at media coverage of the weight-loss drug Ozempic (much of it overly sceptical, the pair agree), and…

Audacity to Believe by Sheila Cassidy, 1977 (out of print). Her true story of being imprisoned and tortured in the notorious Villa Grimaldi in Chile under Pinochet’s barbarous rule still inspires my commitment to human rights. In Memoriam by Alice Winn, 2023 (Viking £14.99). Set in the First World War, this novel is full of danger, guts, yearning and wasted opportunity. You just hope that at least one of the two heroes survives – and fear every turn of the page. The Red and the Black by Stendhal, 1830 (Penguin £9.99). It veers from high drama and illicit passion to slapstick and social satire, but what is so clever is that there are moments when even the odious characters elicit your sympathy. No other novel reveals the moral ambiguity in…

Programmes Walter Presents: Exterior Night Italian political drama set in 1978, revolving around the kidnapping of politician Aldo Moro. Mon 21 Aug, C4 00:30 (65mins). Tommy Jessop Goes to Hollywood The Line of Duty actor Tommy Jessop heads to Hollywood to pitch his own superhero movie and find out whether Tinseltown is ready for a leading man with Down’s syndrome. Mon 21 Aug, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). Top Guns: Inside the RAF New series giving unprecedented access to the day-to-day operations of RAF pilots and personnel at a time of global tension. Mon 21 Aug, C4 21:00 (60mins). The Price of Truth The extraordinary story of Dmitry Muratov, who as editor of Moscow’s only opposition newspaper has consistently risked his life to tell the truth about Putin’s Russia. Mon 21 Aug,…

Sri Lanka adventure Spend 10 nights in the land of rolling tea plantations and lush jungle landscapes. From £1,549pp half-board (incl. flights & excursions). 020-3608 0135, secretescapes.com. Depart 30 September. Charming Bordeaux villa Stay 7 nights in the 3-bedroom Ferme d’Aquitaine, boasting a swimming pool and games room. Six sharing from £273pp self-catering (excl. flights). 020-3993 4088, cvvillas.com. Arrive 16 September. Malta winter break A 5-night seaside getaway with a stay at the db Seabank Resort & Spa near the tourist resort of Mellieha. From £269pp all-inclusive (incl. flights). 020-7183 2819, planmytour.co.uk. Depart 7 December. Seven-night Cyprus stay The Galene Beach Villa occupies a stunning seafront position and sleeps up to 8 people. From £169pp selfcatering (excl. flights). 0800-074 0122, jamesvillas.co.uk. Arrive 25 October.…

Big financial shifts often claim a prominent British retailer, said Tom Davey in City AM. Woolworths collapsed alongside the banks in late 2008; Covid lockdowns proved the coup de grâce for Debenhams. And now the discount chain Wilko has gone into administration – a victim of surging prices, supply-chain snags and rising interest rates. Given the disappearance of “cheap capital” and the “slow and fraught” process of refinancing, it’s unlikely to be the last casualty. Meanwhile, 400 shops and 12,000 jobs are on the line. Founded in 1930, when J.K. Wilkinson opened his first shop in Leicester, Wilko’s cheap household and gardening goods filled the gap on many high streets left by Woolworths, said Joanna Partridge in The Guardian. Several large retailers and financial groups – including Homebase’s owner, the…

“Last year was tough for all investors, but ones that hang out on Reddit suffered more than most,” said The Economist. Still, proclamations of the death of “meme” investments (stocks with little to recommend them except their cult status online) may have been over-hasty. US meme stocks “are now shooting past the rest of the market, which has itself surged”. When the “apes” (retail investors) “are going all in”, there is no clearer evidence of a bull market. Stocks are also “back in favour” among global institutional investors, said Ben Martin in The Times. The latest Bank of America monthly poll points to new optimism that the era of rising interest rates and rampant inflation may be ending. “Top investors are increasingly abandoning the safe haven of cash.” Yet markets…

The week’s best shares 4imprint Group The Daily Telegraph The corporate promotional products-maker has roared back from Covid – revenues are 32% higher than in 2019, with profits up 92%. Yields 2.5%, and a special dividend is possible. Buy. £50.80. AstraZeneca The Times The pharma’s ten-year R&D investment is paying off: oncology meds were the star of first-half results; cardiovascular meds not too far behind. In “strong long-term” shape, with more than 120 late-stage clinical trials under way. Buy. £108.82. Hollywood Bowl Group The Sunday Times Punters have been flocking to Hollywood Bowl’s cheap, family-friendly ten-pin bowling centres. Inflation has hurt, but dynamic pricing keeps it nimble. Revenues are up 20.7%, driven by a “stonking run” in Canada. Buy. 216.5p. Intercontinental Hotels Group The Times This bellwether for the hospitality…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1376 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 28 August. Send it to The Week Crossword 1376, 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 Perhaps Victoria in naughty poster will lead to complaints (13) 10 Light a chambermaid cannot do without (5) 11 Policy clear to leader of opposition (9) 12 Attractive girl on time in New York is not fair (9) 13 Heard one from the Balkans…