Table of contents for 1447 in The Week

What happened Rishi Sunak was accused of backsliding on his climate-change commitments this week, after he confirmed plans to issue hundreds of new licences for North Sea oil and gas exploration. The prime minister insisted the move was compatible with the Government’s 2050 net zero strategy, saying that a quarter of the UK’s energy needs were still expected to be met by oil and gas in 2050. It made “absolutely no sense”, he said, to import energy supplies with “two to three times the carbon footprint of what we have got at home”. His plan for more domestic drilling was coupled with an announcement of two new projects to capture carbon dioxide and store it under the North Sea. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Sunak declared that he…

The cynicism of Vladimir Putin knows no bounds, said The Sunday Times. Having abandoned the UN-brokered grain deal that ensured safe passage for Ukraine’s crops to markets, despite warnings that it could cause “hunger or worse” in low-income African nations, the Russian president last week had the nerve to pose as a loyal friend of the continent at the Russia-Africa Summit in St Petersburg. He promised to supply free Russian grain to six African countries, including Eritrea and Somalia. He talked of wiping out debt and quoted Nelson Mandela. It emerged that he had given a helicopter to Zimbabwe’s president. Africa should beware of Putin’s blandishments, said Tafi Mhaka on Al Jazeera. When 43 African heads of state attended the first of these summits nearly four years ago (only 17…

Wild campers, after the Court of Appeal ruled that they do have the right to pitch a tent on Dartmoor after all. A local landowner had successfully challenged the practice, arguing, among other things, that campers drop litter and damage the environment. However, the case turned on the meaning of “open-air recreation” – access for which is guaranteed by the Dartmoor Commons Act – and whether or not sleeping under canvas counted as such. The Bank Tavern, in central Bristol, which was rated as the hardest place in the world to get a reservation. Its Sunday roasts are so popular that it stopped taking bookings in March 2022, after its waiting list reached four years.…

Civitavecchia, Italy Remarkable wreck: The wreck of a Roman cargo ship that sank around 2,000 years ago was found off the Italian coast last week, laden with hundreds of amphorae, most of which are apparently intact. Though their contents are unknown, these terracotta jars (classified as Dressel 1B-type) were typically used to transport fish sauce, olive oil or wine. The vessel, estimated to be more than 20m long and to date from the first or second century BC, was discovered off the port city of Civitavecchia, 50 miles north of Rome, at a depth of about 160 metres. The find was made by the Carabinieri Art Squad, a division of the police whose divers patrol Italy’s coastline to protect the country’s many underwater archaeological treasures from looters. The wreck, described…

1 Unfinished Sympathy by Robert “3D” Del Naja, Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles, Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, Shara Nelson and Jonathan “Jonny Dollar” Sharp, performed by Massive Attack 2 Mama by Phil Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, performed by Genesis 3 Money Can’t Buy It, written and performed by Annie Lennox 4 Iron Sky by Paolo Nutini, Dave Nelson and Charles Chaplin, performed by Paolo Nutini 5 We Are the Champions, written by Freddie Mercury, performed by Queen 6 Another Day in Paradise, written and performed by Phil Collins 7* Fallen, written and performed by Lauren Wood 8 The Power of Love, written by Holly Johnson, Mark O’Toole, Peter Gill and Brian Nash, performed by Frankie Goes to Hollywood Book: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas Luxury: diving fins and a mask * Choice if allowed only one record…

A waste-incinerator facility in Plymouth was due to open its doors to families this week for what it billed as an “unforgettable day of excitement and entertainment”. MVV Environment Devonport promised “engaging games and activities” designed to let the “inner child run wild”, as well as a selection of “delightful” food stalls. “Don’t miss this chance to explore our facility, witness our cutting-edge processes, and gain valuable knowledge about waste management and sustainability,” it said. A zoo in eastern China has been forced to deny allegations that its bears are actually humans in furry suits. Speculation began after a photograph of one of the bears, standing on its hind legs and gesturing with its front paws, went viral. Hangzhou Zoo said the confusion was due to ignorance about sun bears,…

NIGERIA We can’t afford another Biafran War The Nation (Lagos) Here’s a radical solution to the violence in Nigeria’s southeast, says Femi Kusa: give the separatists what they’ve been asking for. In the five states they dominate, members of the Igbo ethnic group have been dreaming of independence for decades, and the pursuit of that goal has led to unspeakable bloodshed and suffering. When, in 1967, they declared the independent Republic of Biafra, millions of people were killed in the ensuing three-year Biafran War with Nigeria’s federal government. Now, armed separatists (bandits, by some accounts) have wrested control of the region. Their terrifying shadow government – known as Ungun, for “unknown gunmen” – imposes arbitrary rules such as “sit-at-home Mondays”, when people are banned from leaving their homes: businesses can’t…

It’s 32 years since Gerald Ratner nearly sank his family jewellery company by joking that their decanters were “crap”, and their earrings were “cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich” but unlikely to last as long. Yet he is still invited to comment on other corporate debacles. Asked last week for a quote on the “debanking” scandal, he told the journalist James Heale: “If I had £100 for every time I’ve seen people say some corporate decision is a ‘Gerald Ratner moment’, I could open a Coutts account.” Rishi Sunak’s mother-in-law, Sudha Murty, is a billionaire, so she can afford to eat out. But rather than rely on restaurants to serve her the vegetarian food she loves, she travels with a bag full of food, and a small cooker to heat…

“If you owe the bank £100, you have a problem, but if you owe the bank £1m, the bank has the problem.”Attrib. John Maynard Keynes, quoted in The Guardian “When you stand in front of an audience, remember ‘ABC XYZ’. Always be cheerful. And examine your zip.”The late Duke of Edinburgh on public speaking, quoted by Martin Vander Weyer in The Spectator “What a fantastic creature is man, a novelty, a monstrosity, chaotic, contradictory, prodigious, judge of all things, feeble earthworm, bearer of truth, mine of uncertainty and error, glory and refuse of the universe!”Blaise Pascal, quoted in The Guardian “Nobody is a ‘motorist’. Sometimes we just drive cars.”Hugo Rifkind in The Times “If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks. If it is a…

Cycling Demi Vollering of Holland emphatically won the Tour de France Femmes cycle stage race, finishing 3 mins and 3 secs ahead of second-placed Lotte Kopecky of Belgium. Football Chelsea are set to sign defender Axel Disasi from Monaco, having agreed to pay £38.5m for the French defender. Tennis Alexander Zverev became the first German player in 30 years to win the Hamburg Open. The 26-year-old beat the Serbian, Laslo Djere, 7-5, 6-3 in the final. America’s Taylor Fritz won the Atlanta Open.…

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954 (HarperCollins £25). My brother was always an avid reader and his well-thumbed copy was actually the first book I read cover-to-cover. I loved the attention to detail, the world and characters that Tolkien created. I got totally lost in it. The Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser, 1996 (Orion £14.99). As a history graduate who wrote a dissertation about a Catholic priest called Henry Garnet who was killed for his role in the Gunpowder Plot, this was always going to be right up my street. I love authors who bring history to life and Fraser does that on every page, making the reader feel like they’re involved in a 17th century Miss Marple. Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson, 2013 (Ebury £14.99). Phil Jackson…

Programmes Elizabeth II: Making a Monarch A two-part look at the late Queen’s early life, using never-before-seen photos and archive footage to tell the story of her childhood and life during the War. Sat 5 Aug, C4 18:15 (60mins). The Queens That Changed the World Series exploring the power and influence of female monarchs through the ages. First up, Elizabeth I, who brought prosperity to England and survived multiple plots against her. Sat 5 Aug, C4 19:15 (60mins). Levison Wood: Walking with Orangutans The explorer and writer travels to the jungles of Borneo to see the apes in their natural habitat, as deforestation threatens their survival. Sun 6 Aug, C4 20:00 (60mins). Killer Storm: The Fastnet Disaster Survivors, rescuers and reporters relive the 1979 Fastnet Race, when 21 people lost…

Ribblehead, in North Yorkshire, sits next to the spectacular Ribblehead Viaduct, crossed often by steam trains. There’s a visitor centre and coffee shop, run by a trust which looks after the buildings and runs some as holiday lets, including the stationmaster’s house (settlecarlisletrust.org.uk). The Grade II listed Great Malvern station in Worcestershire has generous canopies supported by cast-iron columns with ornate capitals. The French gothic-style waiting room has been revamped as a tea room. Wemyss Bay, Inverclyde, has a mix of Italianate and Georgian styles which were designed to entice Glasgwegians off the Clyde steamers and on to the rails for holiday trips to the Isle of Bute. The station is lovingly maintained by volunteers who do the flowers and run a station bookshop. Mostly a request stop, tiny Llanaber,…

How America dodged its recession John Cassidy The New Yorker Last October, a survey of more than 60 economic forecasters overwhelmingly predicted a US recession this year. They were “way off”, says John Cassidy. In fact, growth, which motored along at 2.4% in the second quarter, may now be running at an unsustainable rate. How have households and businesses been able to shrug off higher prices and higher interest rates, at least so far? One reason is that inflation, which slowed to 3.6% in June, is now rising less rapidly than wages. Another is that many Americans locked in low interest rates on mortgages and other debt before the Fed started raising rates. Finally, many economists underestimated the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act, which has sparked a surge in…

In the spring of 2021, Satoshi Tomokiyo came upon a collection of encoded letters in the online archive of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. They were described simply as Dépêches chiffrées, enciphered messages. Nobody knew who the author was, or who the letters were addressed to. They were written on handmade paper and composed of tightly packed strings of strange, unpunctuated characters, like the writing of an ancient civilisation, drawn with a quill dipped in iron-gall ink. Dating from the late 16th century, they had been kept for hundreds of years in a volume of miscellaneous letters, bound together in red goatskin for the library of a French noble family, until the Bibliothèque Nationale started digitising manuscripts in the 2010s. Tomokiyo, a patents expert in Tokyo, posted the enciphered letters…

What happened The fallout from the closure of Nigel Farage’s Coutts account claimed a second scalp last week, when the bank’s chief executive, Peter Flavel, stepped down. Flavel’s resignation was announced two days after the departure of Alison Rose, the CEO of Coutts’s parent company, NatWest, who’d come under political pressure for inaccurately briefing the BBC that Farage’s account was shut because he didn’t have enough money in it. It marked the culmination of a week in which NatWest chair Howard Davies was left fighting for his job, and £850m was wiped from the bank’s share value in a single day after Rose’s exit. Farage, who had earlier produced evidence that he had been dropped by the private bank because of his politics, vowed to be a “champion and crusader”…

The Government was this week pressing ahead with its plans to house hundreds of migrants on a barge moored at Portland in Dorset, despite concerns about fire safety and other matters. The Home Office had been planning to send some 50 migrants to the Bibby Stockholm on Tuesday, but their arrival was pushed back, apparently to allow more time for “checks and inspections”. Among those questioning the vessel’s suitability as a home for up to 500 migrants was South Dorset Tory MP Richard Drax. There has been significant local opposition to the barge; however, the Government hopes that if the Portland scheme goes smoothly, other areas will agree to host migrant barges. Separately, the Home Office was reported to have acquired marquees large enough to accommodate 2,000 migrants, as part…

HS2, after a Government watchdog concluded that the rail project was “unachievable” in its current form. “There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable,” said the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. The Ministry of Defence, with reports that officials accidentally emailed sensitive information about research into hypersonic missiles to Mali, a country with close links to the Kremlin. The emails were meant to go to the Pentagon, which has the domain name “.mil”, but staff typed “.ml” instead, which is used by Mali. Margaret Ferrier, the Covid rule-breaking SNP MP, after constituents used a recall petition to remove her from her seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West. The SNP will set a date for…

Washington DC Trump indicted: Donald Trump was indicted this week on federal charges related to his sustained effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the lead-up to the 6 January Capitol riots. It means that the Republican frontrunner is now facing three criminal trials, two of them in federal courts. The charges include conspiracy to defraud the US and to disrupt an official proceeding. Announcing the indictment, special counsel Jack Smith – a former war crimes prosecutor at The Hague – described the Capitol riots as an “unprecedented assault” on American democracy, which was “fuelled” by Trump’s “lies” aimed at “obstructing a bedrock function of the US government”, the counting and certifying of the results of the US election. Trump retaliated, saying the charges were reminiscent of…

“If you were looking for comedy in the seriousness of Oppenheimer, there was something. It was Albert Einstein. Oppenheimer encounters him feeding the ducks at Princeton. What made me laugh was not their conversation or any failure on the part of the actor. It was the impossibility of trying to fit Einstein into this sort of film. He is too fixed in the public imagination for any actor to make real. It is like that film moment when a man in a wig strides into a room and says, ‘Herr Beethoven, did you not hear me knocking?’, or Shakespeare, walking down a half-timbered street, sees a boy going reluctantly to school and makes a mental note. It works in comedy, but not in this.” Richard Coles in The Times…

Trump has a chilling plan for America… Brynn Tannehill The New Republic Hard to remember it all now, but back in 2016, Donald Trump hadn’t expected to win the White House, and he arrived embarrassingly ill-prepared, says Brynn Tannehill. So much so that meetings were held in the dark, because his team didn’t know how to work the lights. This lack of planning limited his ability to wreak havoc. But now he has had four years to devise a plan, and what we know of it is chilling. It is inspired by the “unitary executive theory”, an interpretation of the US constitution which basically holds that the president is an “elected king who has authority over everything but can be prosecuted for nothing”; and it involves taking control of all…

By 2040, one in five people in England will have a major illness, a report has warned. In 2019, one adult in six was living with cancer, diabetes, dementia or another serious condition; as the population ages, numbers are likely to increase, leaving over 9 million people in poor health. Cases of heart failure are forecast to rise by 92%; diabetes by 49%; dementia by 45%; and depression by 16%, with gains from fewer people smoking and cholesterol-lowering drugs more than offset by the impact of obesity. It will put strain on all parts of the NHS; and have implications for the labour market and public finances too, said the Health Foundation, which carried out the study with the University of Liverpool. However, these pressures can be managed, with careful…

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett Bloomsbury 320pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99 With bestsellers such as Bel Canto and The Dutch House, Anne Patchett has established a reputation for writing “accessible fiction”, marked by a “determination to see the good in people”, said Lucy Atkins in The Guardian. Her latest is “possibly the most upbeat pandemic novel” yet written. In the summer of 2020, Lara, 57, the owner of a Michigan cherry orchard, finds her three grown-up daughters returning home. During the long days, she regales them with “glowing memories” of a brief romance she once had with a Hollywood star. These are interspersed with details of present-day farm life. While readers who had tricky lockdowns may not warm to the “homespun happiness” of this novel, I found it moving…

“Nay, her foot speaks” at Cooke Latham Gallery When it comes to art exhibitions, it pays to be sceptical of Shakespearean allusions. Yet “Nay, her foot speaks”, a line from Troilus and Cressida, explores a subject fundamental to much contemporary art but rarely addressed head-on: non-verbal language. The show assembles the work of seven emerging artists, from Francisco Rodriguez’s charming, pop-inflected oil painting of suburban schoolboys messing around with their uniforms to Valerie Asiimwe Amani’s delicate, beautiful dyed fabric creations. Charlie Billingham fields illustrative Georgian fantasies, and Sophie Thun, 1970s-style monochrome photomontages. The single best work here is probably Alicja Biala’s peculiar painting Seven Women Crying, in which the eponymous figures are represented by hands reaching across a circular table to slice onions. It’s a picture that finds a middle ground…

Where kids eat for free Dining out with kids in the school holidays can be expensive, says Tomé Morrisy-Swan in The Daily Telegraph. But there are quite a few restaurants that offer free meals for children – including some which are surprisingly good. The children’s menu at the excellent Elite Bistros, which has seven outposts in Manchester, Liverpool and Chester, is free for under-12s on Sundays: kids can “tuck into homemade versions of classics”, including “brilliant roast beef”. Many outlets in the Gordon Ramsay restaurant group – including Bread Street Kitchen & Bars, Gordon Ramsay Bar & Grills, Pizza East and York & Albany – offer free mains for each child under eight eating with an adult dining à la carte (sadly, the offer doesn’t apply to the three-Michelin-star Restaurant…

Sinéad O’Connor 1966-2023 Sinéad O’Connor, who has died aged 56, produced one of the most memorable songs of the 1990s. Her haunting, heart-wrenching cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U reached the top of the charts all over the world in 1990, including in her native Ireland, the UK and the US, and it was accompanied by one of the more striking videos of the era; lasting more than five minutes, it consisted mainly of a close-up of her delicate face, and towards the end of the song, tears started to roll from her wide, expressive eyes. She later explained that one of its lyrics had made her think of her mother, who’d died in a car crash when she was 18, with many issues between them unresolved. The song…

Dame Alison Rose “In the space of a few short weeks, the NatWest brand has become as tarnished as the RBS name that it replaced,” said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. Ultimately responsible was CEO Alison Rose, 53, who was forced out of her £5.25m job last week, ending a 31-year career at the bank. It is shameful that it took an intervention from Downing Street to budge her. When Rose took charge in 2019 – becoming “the first female boss of one of Britain’s big four banks” – it was “the culmination of a professional lifetime” at the lender, said Ben Martin in The Times. Born into a military family, she “harboured ambitions to become a diplomat”, but joined Royal Bank of Scotland, as it was then, as…

Last year we had “quiet quitting”; now Gen Z women on TikTok are extolling the benefits of “lazy girl jobs” – a term coined to describe jobs that pay well but demand minimal effort. One self-proclaimed “lazy girl” said: “All I have to do is copy and paste the same emails/documents, take two to four phone calls a day, take a break whenever, listen to my podcast, all while getting a nice paycheque.” Out On An Island, a project to highlight LGBTQ+ culture on the Isle of Wight, has included Alfred Lord Tennyson’s home on its trail. Though there is no clear evidence that the long-married poet was gay, the organisers say his story is among those that may have been obscured by “cis/heteronormative narratives”.…

23% of adults in the UK who regularly swim in the sea during the summer say they wouldn’t do so now because of anxieties about the sewage dumped by water companies. 45% say they are less likely to swim. Liberal Democrats/Savanta 76% of British adults believe the country is becoming a worse place to live. In 2010, only 49% believed things were getting worse. Ipsos/Evening Standard 71% of adults in the UK are in favour of the broad goal of net zero carbon emissions. But only 42% agree with the plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars after 2030. And just 42% of adults support the phasing out of new gas boilers, which is due to begin in 2035 YouGov/The Times…

The unexpected horn player When Felix Klieser was four, he decided he wanted to learn the French horn, says Tim Jonze in The Guardian. A music teacher gently suggested alternatives – might he like to make sounds on a piano, perhaps, or bang a drum? “I remember becoming a little bit angry,” says the German musician, “because the idea was not to make music. The idea was to play the horn!” A determined and focused child, he had the temperament to succeed with the instrument; but there was a snag: he was born without arms, meaning he’d have to play using his toes. Now 32, Klieser has recorded a string of acclaimed albums and made his Proms debut this week. Far from holding him back, he believes his disability has…

History will be on the side of the eco-pests Alan Rusbridger The Independent Hypocrites. Loons. Prats. Just Stop Oil protesters get a poor press, says Alan Rusbridger, so sympathy will be in short supply for the two activists who have just appealed in vain against the harsh prison terms (one of them got three years, the other two years and seven months) they’re currently serving for scaling the bridge at the Dartford Crossing last year, closing it to traffic. Undoubtedly, they caused chaos. Some would almost certainly wish their terms had been extended. Yet in Britain, we have a long and proud tradition (endorsed by such eminent figures as Lord Denning) of not incarcerating non-violent protesters acting on a matter of conscience. And although Just Stop Oil’s stunts are disruptive,…

The benefits of doing the plank Kick off your running shoes and put away your bike; the best way to tackle high blood pressure involves barely moving at all. Planks, wall-sits and other “static isometric” exercises in which you bend or lower your body into a hard-to-hold position, then use your muscles to retain it for a minute or two, are significantly more effective than aerobic exercise at lowering blood pressure, a study has found. Around one in three adults has high blood pressure, which puts them at higher risk of conditions including heart attacks, strokes and vascular dementia. To combat it, the current advice is to cycle, run and do other fast-moving aerobic activities; but this was formulated before newer routines, such as isometric exercises and high-intensity interval training…

When liberals in California decided to effectively decriminalise thefts under $950, by downgrading such crimes to mere misdemeanours, the effects were “tediously predictable”, said Zoe Strimpel in The Daily Telegraph. Shoplifting soared – and San Francisco became so lawless, “some of America’s biggest chains” left the city’s downtown. We in Britain watched CCTV footage of gangs walking into stores unchallenged, and stripping the shelves of goods, with horrified amazement at the state of modern America. But last week, a major British retailer – the Co-op – warned that parts of our cities are now also at risk of becoming “no-go” areas for shops, owing to a shocking rise in crime. In the six months to June, Co-op recorded almost 1,000 incidents of crime every day across its 2,500 outlets, including…

History-making hijab Moroccan defender Nouhaila Benzina made history on Sunday by wearing a hijab as she appeared for her country against South Korea in the Women’s World Cup. A Fifa ban on players wearing headscarves for religious reasons – on the grounds that the head coverings posed a risk of injury – was rescinded in 2014, and Benzina, 25, is the first player since then to appear in the garment at a senior World Cup. Elsewhere in the tournament, England finished top of their group after beating China 6-1, with two goals from Lauren James and one apiece from Alessia Russo, Lauren Hemp, Chloe Kelly and Rachel Daly. The Lionesses will play Nigeria in the last 16 on Monday 9 August. Verstappen rolls on The Belgian Grand Prix offered further…

To The Daily Telegraph I was greatly saddened by the death of Sinéad O’Connor. She was a very different person behind her fame. In 1991, my 20-year-old daughter, Louise, was suffering from terminal cancer, when she received a phone call from Sinéad out of the blue. Sinéad had heard of Louise’s illness from some source, probably the press, as we were raising funds for our local hospice. My daughter was a great admirer of her and loved her music. During this long call, Sinéad invited my daughter to travel to London to spend some time with her. Needless to say, Louise was thrilled. A few days later, Sinéad met Louise at Euston station and, to cut a long story short, Louise had the best week of her short life. They…

A London art dealer has been ordered to pay £111,000 for losing a piece of abstract modern art that a judge likened to a giant “burnt digestive biscuit”, says The Daily Telegraph. The Mexican artist Bosco Sodhi’s two-and-a-half-metre-wide mixed-media abstract painting, Untitled in red 2011, went “missing” after being loaned to Esperanza Koren in 2012. She was later sued by the owners of the piece, the Barcelona-based gallery Principal Art, for whom she had formerly worked as an agent. The gallery claimed that Koren had promised to buy the work, but had then failed to pay for it, and subsequently told them that she didn’t know where it was. Judge Alan Saggerson, sitting in London County Court, said of the painting: “It would seem to have the appearance of a…

Brad has been holding back, worried that Mia will ghost him; George intervenes and gets them back together. Henry overhears Lee and Helen arguing about Rob’s illness; later he tells George he’s fed up with his parents treating him like an idiot. Ed, Emma and Will are still upset after George’s outburst; Ed blames Will for always going easy on George. Brad woos Mia with flowers. Pip invites Stella to join her and Rosie for a night’s camping. George wants to move out, and Ed suggests the farmhouse, but George has other ideas: he wants Will to evict Hannah so he can live there instead. George takes fed-up Henry to the skatepark; later, while Helen is distracted, he gives Henry the number of his “sort-of relation”. Hannah’s upset when she…

• Add left-over parmesan rind to a meaty ragu to give it a savoury, umami backbone, but remove before serving. You can also steep rind in milk for a day, to provide the basis for an intense béchamel sauce. • Stock cubes can be used as a dry rub for roast meats or an alternative to salt. Whisk three or four chicken stock cubes into softened butter, then roll and refrigerate, before slicing into coins and freezing. These can be stirred into a sauce or used on roast potatoes or steamed veg for instant flavour. • If you rinse rice, keep the starchy water for boiling veg: it will remove bitterness. • Fry finely chopped anchovies at the start of a stew or sauce, they’ll add a layer of salty…

George Alagiah 1955-2023 One of Britain’s “most respected TV journalists”, George Alagiah, who has died aged 67, reported on the famine in Somalia in the 1990s, and then the genocide in Rwanda, said The Guardian. He was also a member of the Bafta-winning BBC news team that secured distressing images of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999. After that, he gave up his job as a foreign correspondent, and donned “the sharp suits of the studio-based presenter”, as he put it, to become a trusted presence on the BBC World News, the One O’Clock News and the Six O’Clock News. He had been a fixture at the BBC since 1989, and although his view of it was not uncritical, he was a passionate believer in the importance of the public-service…

The German sandal-maker, which traces its roots back to 1774, has enjoyed a renaissance of late thanks to a youth revival. And an appearance in the Barbie movie has further boosted the Birki brand, said Yahoo Finance. Now you can own a slice of the business. Birkenstock’s private equity owner, L. Catterton, is reported to be planning to list the stock as early as September, and is “eyeing an $8bn valuation ahead of its market debut”. “An exit at that valuation would mark a bumper return” for L. Catterton, noted the Financial Times. But plenty of others will be watching this float carefully – if Birki “pops”, it could kickstart the stagnant IPO market.…

“Stock markets in Asia have surged since Chinese officials began announcing initiatives to boost the economy last week,” said The Economist. But the rally is already coming off the boil, because the measures are “a far cry from the kinds of broader fiscal stimulus” that markets reckon the country needs, said Dealbook in The New York Times. With the threat of deflation looming, the moves so far “are too small to matter”, said Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University. Meanwhile, the data is getting worse. Manufacturing activity has contracted for a fourth consecutive month, and services sector activity is at its lowest level this year. Investors are still holding out for a big intervention from the Chinese government, hoping that it will “pull something out of the bag”,…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares Bango The Mail on Sunday Bango helps businesses from Amazon to Vodafone charge for subscriptions, making it easier for customers to pay. It has bought its main rival, and is expanding into “superbundling”. Profits should soar. Target £3.15. Buy. 189p. Games Workshop Group Investors’ Chronicle Solid revenue and profit growth support a hike in the miniature-maker’s divi, despite the hit to margins from wage rises and investment. Revenues could “materially benefit” from an Amazon TV and film deal. Buy. £112.80. GSK Investors’ Chronicle The pharma’s shingles jab and HIV vaccine have been driving sales, with profits set to rise – boosted by a strengthened new drugs pipeline. The Zantac lawsuit weighs on shares. Still, worth the risk. Buy. £14.05. Jet2 The Sunday Times…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1374 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 14 August. Send it to The Week Crossword 1374, 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 What’s inserted here? (6) surrounding hospital blanket (8) 10 Announcement about leave in Washington office (5,10) 11 Set out in sounds like Concorde! (7) 12 Interim cast finishes (7) 13 Unfinished Hearts’ new ground (5) 15 Going on board, first in early morning getting…