Table of contents for 1489 in The Week

What happened Rishi Sunak offered a “wholehearted and unequivocal” apology this week to the victims of the contaminated blood scandal, on what he declared a “day of shame for the British state”. His statement followed the publication of an excoriating report into what has been called the worst treatment disaster in NHS history. During the 1970s through to 1991, more than 30,000 people in the UK were infected with HIV, hepatitis C or both, either from receiving transfusions during surgery or through “Factor VIII” blood plasma products imported from the US to treat haemophilia. More than 3,000 of these people have since died, and victims are still dying at a rate of around one every four days. The final report of the five-year public inquiry, led by Brian Langstaff, concluded…

Politicians, or rather their “campaign shamans”, believe that all the modern public can really digest is a short list of policy points, said The Times. In 1997, Tony Blair had five punchy Labour pledges printed on a card. Less successfully, in 2015, Ed Miliband carved all his policies on a megalith, the “Ed Stone”. With the next election in the offing, Keir Starmer unveiled the six “first steps” that Labour would take in power in Essex last week. Starmer exuded purpose, in rolled-up shirtsleeves: this was “meant to be a big moment”. But the pledges were vague, and hard figures were disappointingly few. The six steps were: “Deliver economic stability”, by sticking to “tough spending rules”; “Cut NHS waiting times” with 40,000 more evening and weekend appointments each week; “Launch…

The owners of South West Water (SWW) have agreed to pay £215 in compensation to each of the households in Devon whose water supplies have been affected by the presence of the parasite cryptosporidium. The outbreak was detected last Wednesday, leading to 16,000 households in and around Brixham being issued with urgent boil-water notices. Dozens of people fell ill. By Tuesday, clean water was said to have been restored to 85% of homes. SWW said it had traced the likely source of the outbreak to a faulty valve that had allowed animal waste to contaminate the supply.…

Rouen, France Synagogue attack: Police have shot and killed a man who set fire to a synagogue in Rouen, the latest in a recent wave of antisemitic crimes in France. The arsonist was spotted on the roof of the synagogue shortly after starting the blaze. When police arrived, he jumped down and ran towards them, threatening them with a knife. After issuing a warning, an officer shot at him five times. He died at the scene. The fire was brought under control, but the synagogue was badly damaged, and parts of the roof had fallen in. Authorities identified the attacker as a 29-year-old Algerian citizen who had applied for permission to stay in France for medical treatment and had been refused. He had not been flagged as an extremist suspect.…

1* Livin’ on a Prayer by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and Desmond Child, performed by Bon Jovi2 Spinning Around by Ira Shickman, Osborne Bingham, Kara DioGuardi and Paula Abdul, performed by Kylie Minogue3 It Only Takes a Minute by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, performed by Take That4 A Different Beat by Ronan Keating, Stephen Gately, Shane Lynch, Keith Duffy, Martin Brannigan and Ray Hedges, performed by Boyzone5 This Is the One by Ian Brown and John Squire, performed by The Stone Roses6 Heroes by David Bowie and Brian Eno, performed by David Bowie7 Wannabe by Spice Girls, Matt Rowe and Richard Stannard, performed by The Spice Girls8 Step On by John Kongos and Christos Demetriou, performed by Happy Mondays Book: The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters Luxury: a…

The final rebellion against Boris Johnson’s premiership was precipitated by his deputy chief whip Chris Pincher’s resignation in June 2022: Pincher had, in his own words, “drunk far too much” at the Carlton Club and had allegedly sexually harassed two men. It was, however, far from the first time that history had been made, and scandal unleashed, in London’s clubs. In the late 1700s, the Whig statesman Charles James Fox was bankrupted by vast losses incurred on the gaming tables at Brooks’s; his gambling became a matter of great public fascination. The Albemarle Club, a mixed institution to which Oscar Wilde belonged, was the location of the incident that led to Wilde’s trial and imprisonment. In February 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde’s lover, burst in, demanding…

How Trump lost out in the TV debates Jim Geraghty The Washington Post It’s on, says Jim Geraghty: after months of uncertainty, Joe Biden and Donald Trump have agreed that they will take part in televised presidential debates after all. There are typically three such clashes in the run-up to the election, and the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates had proposed that they take place between 16 September and 9 October. Biden said no to those events, but he has now secured Trump’s agreement to two earlier debates – on 27 June and 10 September. For Biden, who risks coming across as doddery on stage, this “absurdly early” schedule is a boon. The first debate will take place a week before the Fourth of July, when most people are focused…

Just before 11am last Tuesday, two prison vans slowed down to pass through a toll booth on a motorway in Normandy, said Louise Nordstrom on France 24 (Paris). They were supposed to be transporting an offender back to a secure jail in Évreux, following a court hearing in Rouen, 30 miles away. But as they pulled away, the vans were ambushed: a stolen Peugeot rammed the front of the first vehicle and an Audi blocked the convoy from the rear. Men wielding Kalashnikovs leapt out of the cars, surrounded the vans, opened fire on the guards, and released the inmate – a career criminal named Mohamed Amra. The men then sped away in the Audi, which was later found torched. Conducted with military precision, the operation took only about two…

People who are overweight or obese are significantly more likely to have to take time off work for health reasons, a study has found. Analysis of data on more than 122,000 people from across Europe revealed that those who were overweight, with a BMI of 25 to 30, had a 22% higher chance of having taken at least seven days off work in the past year; people who were mildly obese, with a BMI of 30 to 35, were 38% more likely to have been off work, increasing to 52% for those with a BMI of 35 to 40, and 121% for those with a BMI of more than 40. The study, which has yet to be peer reviewed, and which was part-funded by the manufacturer of a weight-loss drug,…

“Russia and China are not the most natural of allies,” said Roland Oliphant and David Child in The Daily Telegraph. For centuries, they fought over competing territorial claims in east Asia; in the Cold War, Mao’s China split acrimoniously with the Soviet Union. “But today, as the world once again divides into geopolitical camps, there is a rare sense of shared purpose.” Vladimir Putin visited China last week, where he and President Xi Jinping pledged a “new era” of partnership. Putin claimed that Russia and China were together “defending the principles of justice and a democratic world order”. Both leaders took aim at the US. “The United States still thinks in terms of the Cold War and is guided by the logic of bloc confrontation,” declared their joint statement. “The…

“Every film would be improved by removing 15 minutes and adding a helicopter explosion.”Roger Corman, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle “Governing the Italians is not difficult, it is pointless.”Five-time Italian prime minister Giovanni Giolitti, quoted in The Knowledge “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”Carl Sagan, quoted in Sky & Telescope “Success didn’t spoil me. I’ve always been insufferable.”Fran Lebowitz, quoted in Forbes “Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.”Rita Mae Brown, quoted in Reader’s Digest “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”Hunter S. Thompson, quoted in the Daily Mail “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, quoted in The Forward “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it…

Does the West End really need a stage adaptation of Fawlty Towers, the “greatest British sitcom ever made”? I entered the theatre feeling pretty sceptical, said Fiona Mountford in The i Paper. But I “emerged two hours later, giddily and delightfully weak from laughing and reminded for the umpteenth time of the sheer folly of making pre-emptive judgements about shows”. John Cleese himself scripted this adaptation, which weaves together three favourite episodes of the comedy he co-wrote with Connie Booth: The Hotel Inspectors, The Germans and Communication Problems. Thanks to slick writing, hilarious performances and “super-smooth” direction from Caroline Jay Ranger, it recreates the original TV show’s “magic” and leaves the audience “wanting more, much more”. With its “slapstick and mounting chaos”, Fawlty Towers had its roots in theatrical farce,…

John Krasinski – one of the stars of the US version of The Office – proved himself a proficient horror director with the A Quiet Place film series; now he has moved into “mushier terrain” with IF, a children’s film brimming with “wistful wonder”, said Ed Potton in The Times. Cailey Fleming stars as Bea, a 12-year-old whose mother dies from cancer in an “Up-style” prologue. A few years later, her father (Krasinski) also falls ill, and so Bea goes to live with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw, sporting “a mostly American accent”), in her flat in Brooklyn. There, she discovers that she can see other people’s imaginary friends (or IFs), including a loveable, furry monster voiced by Steve Carell, and an arch butterfly (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). The film isn’t big on…

Forget Harry versus William, or republicans versus monarchists, said Laura Freeman in The Times. The question now dividing royal watchers is: “King Charles in oils, triumph or disaster?” The first royal portrait of the King was unveiled last week, an eight-foot canvas by Jonny Yeo. It was also the first royal portrait to go viral – and on social media, the nation was “split down the middle”. The fans described it as “magnificent”, “fabulous” and “stunning”. The detractors complained that Charles seemed to be “suspended in a sea of blood”, that his “disembodied head and hands” appeared to be “floating in a sea of crushed raspberries”. When Charles unveiled the picture, he muttered: “Christ!” I had a similar reaction, said Freeman. I admire the face. “Lots of artists can do…

Emotions run high after the accident. George feels sick when he hears about Fallon’s miscarriage and tells Chelsea it happened because of him. Kirsty tries to comfort Fallon, but she wishes no one knew about what happened. Adam suggests that Alice moves in, but she immediately crosses the line by drinking. When Adam insists that she call her sobriety buddy, she does so only to say she’s an alcoholic and will never change. Tension builds between Fallon and heartbroken Harrison; Fallon goes to stay with Jolene at The Bull. Ruairi arrives to see Alice, and suggests she comes to London with him for a while. Paul questions Alistair on the fake call-out he concocted to cover up his and Denise’s date; Mick gets drawn into the complicated lie. Everyone’s praising…

The mighty lemon drizzle cake is everyone’s favourite, says Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This spin on it includes courgettes: as well as helping you up your plant intake, they keep the cake nice and moist. The lemon drizzle topping makes the cake irresistibly zingy. To turn it into a dinner party dessert, serve it with crème fraîche, summer berries and an extra trickle of honey. Makes 8-10 slices 350g coarsely grated courgettes (about 2 medium) ½ tsp fine salt 150g wholemeal spelt flour 100g fine plain wholemeal flour 100g ground almonds or hazelnuts ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda 1 tsp baking powder 30g poppy seeds (optional) 125ml rapeseed or coconut oil 50g soft light brown sugar 30g honey 3 medium eggs finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons 4 sprigs of…

The Glenturret, in Crieff, Perth and Kinross, is Scotland’s oldest working distillery, dating from 1763, and its restaurant has just won its second Michelin star (tours £18 / tasting menu from £195; theglenturret.com). The English Distillery in Roudham, Norfolk, is England’s oldest whisky distillery, founded in 2006. It has the world’s best single malt according to the World Whiskies Awards (tours from £22.50; englishwhisky.co.uk). The Talisker distillery on the Isle of Skye has five copper-pot stills, cask tastings and multisensory experiences (tours from £15; malts.com). It has teamed up with The Three Chimneys restaurant (threechimneys.co.uk) to create a whisky-inspired tasting menu. Granted its licence in 1608, Bushmills, in County Antrim, claims to be the world’s oldest licensed distillery. It has tours, tastings and a café (tours from £15; bushmills.eu). Speyside…

Puqio Arequipa, Peru This new, safari-style tented camp is a great base from which to explore Peru’s “show-stopping” Colca Valley, says Megan Spurrell in Condé Nast Traveller. Guides lead treks and horseback rides to see pre-Inca sites, spot wildlife – including condors and llamalike vicuñas – and to watch the sunset over the canyon (the world’s second-deepest, after its neighbour, the Cotahuasi). The camp’s eight tents have double beds, wood-burning stoves, and terraces with outdoor tubs and showers. The food is “on a par with Lima’s best restaurants”, and draws on local ingredients such as coca leaves and sanky (a cactus fruit). Doubles from £650; puqio.pe.…

Nvidia: catch me if you can The big event on Wall Street this week was chipmaker Nvidia’s quarterly results, said DealBook in The New York Times. Ahead of the announcement, Nvidia – which nearly doubled its market cap to $2.3trn since the beginning of the year – was expected to announce “200% year-on-year revenue growth”, said The Economist. Who’s surprised, given the AI boom? Access to graphics chips (GPUs), particularly Nvidia’s, “is vital for any company that wants to be taken seriously in artificial intelligence”: analysts judge companies either “GPU-rich” or “GPU-poor”. Nvidia’s good fortune was that its video graphics chips were readily “repurposed” for AI workloads. Would-be rivals spot an opportunity there. Minnows such as Cerebras, Groq and MatX dream that their more dedicated chips will do the job…

Tumbling inflation, rising vexation Larry Elliott The Guardian Good news on the economy front, says Larry Elliott. Britain’s headline inflation rate fell sharply to 2.3% in April. “Prices are rising more slowly than at any time in almost three years” and inflation is now “lower in the UK than it is in the EU”. The fall – mainly due to downward trends in household energy bills and food price inflation – will be “helpful for poorer households” who spend a bigger share of income on fuel and food. Even so, “the big drop” (from 3.2% in March and a high of 11.1% in October 2022) “disguises more disappointing details”. For one thing, economists hoped the figure would be slightly lower. There are also concerns about sticky “core inflation”, which strips…

The week’s best shares BP The Daily Telegraph Performance has been volatile due to “erratic” energy prices, but the oil and gas giant is improving efficiency to generate cost savings and has maintained its divi, despite falling profits. Yields 4.6%. Buy. 489.3p. Crystal Amber Fund Limited The Mail on Sunday Crystal Amber owns 82% of Morphic Medical, a US firm that has developed a gut liner to aid weight-loss. Expected to secure UK and European approval this summer. A play on the anti-obesity boom – for the adventurous. Buy. 78p. Inchcape The Times Inchcape is selling its UK car showroom arm to focus on its lucrative distribution business. Customers include Chrysler, Jaguar and Mercedes. Profits and the divi are expected to climb. Buy. 809p. Kainos Group The Sunday Times Hurt…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1415 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 3 June. Send it to The Week Crossword 1415, 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 Week-branded items including a notebook, coffee mug and tote bag, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Church next to a quiet cove (4) 3 Chum maybe in a mess (4,6) 10 Corrupt statesmen getting financial investigation (5,4) 11 TV detective from Scottish island? (5) 12 Story about say, a Belgian city (5) 13 What Cinderella became after twelve (8) 15 Aussie chum…

What happened The funeral of Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, was held in Tehran on Wednesday, three days after he was killed in a helicopter crash in the country’s mountainous northwest. A hardline conservative and close ally of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Raisi was returning from a visit to Azerbaijan when the two-blade Bell 212 aircraft he was travelling in crashed in fog. All nine people on board died; Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was among the other officials killed. Tehran blamed the crash on the poor flying conditions and a “technical failure”: much of Iran’s helicopter fleet dates from the 1970s. Khamenei named first vice-president, Mohammad Mokhber, as Iran’s interim president, and promised elections within 50 days. Thousands of people joined Raisi’s funeral procession; but many Iranians reacted to…

The latest must-have accessory for schoolchildren is a £30 reusable plastic bottle that gives plain water a flavour of cola, or fruit juice, The Guardian reports. Users of the Air Up bottles buy pods which are attached to the nozzle. These infuse the water with scented air, causing the drinker to “taste” a flavour. There are more than 25 pods to choose from, including iced coffee and virgin mojito. Doctors have urged people to resist a new trend, much discussed by online influencers, for “eye tattoos” – to permanently change the person’s eye colour. For the procedure, performed under local anaesthetic, a surgeon cuts into the patient’s cornea and injects it with dye. Complications include light sensitivity, infections and dye leakage.…

Police chiefs have been told to make fewer arrests because of the shortage of space in prisons in England and Wales, The Times has reported. In a memo seen by the paper, chief constables are advised to consider pausing “non-priority arrests” and to suspend operations that could trigger “large numbers of arrests”. In Scotland, where jails are also overcrowded, Justice Minister Angela Constance said she was considering giving early releases to some inmates serving sentences of fewer than four years (and who are not in jail for sexual offences or domestic abuse).…

San Francisco, California Attacker jailed: The QAnon conspiracy theorist who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house in San Francisco two years ago, and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer, was sentenced last week to 30 years. David DePape (left), 44, had gone to the house in San Francisco in the early hours, to look for the then-House Speaker, but she was away and he encountered Paul Pelosi, 84, who was in bed. But this week, the judge in the case admitted that she’d made a procedural error in failing to allow DePape to speak in court, and ordered the hearing to be reopened on 28 May. It’s unclear if his sentence will change. Los Angeles, California “Diddy” assault: The rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has released a video saying he is…

“Tipping in America is really out of control. In upscale restaurants, 20% is a minimum. You are expected to tip a barperson every single time they give you a drink. You must also, of course, tip taxi drivers and anyone who delivers anything. You must tip manicurists. And baristas in coffee shops. And the people who look after your kids. I’ve had to pay a hefty tip at a breakfast buffet, where no one gave me anything. These days, Americans are often asked to tip at self-checkout machines. And I’ve seen people try to justify this by saying: someone worked hard to get merchandise into the shop. To which I can only reply: ‘Well, great, why not give them a salary?’” Sean Thomas in The Spectator…

Wise up: we can’t let Putin win this war Phillip Inman The Observer Western leaders just don’t get it, says Phillip Inman. “Putin is not a pantomime villain. He is the real deal.” He’s digging deep to win the war in Ukraine not just to recapture land that “belongs” to Russia, but because he “needs the war to stay in power”. Buoyed by his smart new defence chief and China’s unofficial support, he has knocked out 60% of Ukraine’s electricity supply; meanwhile, Russia’s new advance in the north threatens Kharkiv and could break the deadlock across the eastern front. Let us be clear: this poses an existential threat to Europe. Ukraine produces over 10% of the world’s wheat and is rich in minerals – assets Putin would use against us…

“Skinny jab” may prevent strokes Originally developed to combat diabetes, semaglutide has since been found to aid weight loss: it is the active ingredient in the so-called skinny jab, Wegovy. Now, in what is being described as the biggest breakthrough since the introduction of statins in the 1990s, a study has found that it can also significantly reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The “gamechanging” results have led to predictions that, by the end of the decade, semaglutide will be prescribed en masse to protect heart health. In the study, 17,604 adults aged 45 and above took semaglutide or a placebo once a week for about three years. All had heart problems and were overweight or obese, but none had diabetes. Analysis of the results showed that those…

The recent vote at The Garrick Club has gone down badly with some, reports Patrick Kidd in The Times. One now former member, a barrister, has put two salmon-and-cucumber club ties up for sale on eBay, where they are described as having only “minimal soup stains”. Pointedly, the ties are listed under “women’s accessories”. The music publicist Alan Edwards got his break in 1974 when he started working for Keith Altham, who then represented some of the biggest bands in the world. On Edwards’s first day, he writes in his memoir, Altham went out for lunch, leaving him to hold the fort. Half-an-hour later, a man wearing a monocle, a fur coat and a top hat turned up and asked for the boss. Edwards immediately identified him as The Who’s…

“Just when it appeared Benjamin Netanyahu’s days in power might finally be numbered, up steps the International Criminal Court (ICC) to save him,” said Jamie Dettmer on Politico. The Israeli PM’s war cabinet looked on the brink of collapse last weekend after his political rival Benny Gantz threatened to quit the government. But all of that was forgotten on Monday, when the ICC’s top prosecutor, the British lawyer Karim Khan, announced that he was requesting arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as for three Hamas leaders, on charges of war crimes. The move angered Israeli politicians on all sides. “Drawing parallels between the leaders of a democratic country determined to defend itself from despicable terror to leaders of a bloodthirsty terror organisation,” raged Gantz,…

It took Manchester City “all of 76 seconds” to open the scoring at the Etihad on Sunday, said Oliver Holt in the Daily Mail. When West Ham gave away possession deep in their half, the ball found its way to 23-year-old Phil Foden, who “stepped outside his man” and “smashed his shot high into the net”. And in that moment, all doubts were extinguished: it was clear that Pep Guardiola’s side would end the afternoon having achieved what no other English club has ever managed – which is to win the top flight four times in a row. The scale of this achievement cannot be overestimated, despite legitimate concerns about the way that City have come to dominate the Premier League over the past decade. Some truly great sides have…

NHS and whistleblowers To The Daily Telegraph Your report on how the NHS deals with whistleblowers did not come as a surprise, as this has been going on for years. Back in the 1990s, Steve Bolsin, a cardiothoracic anaesthetist, blew the whistle on the excess deaths among children undergoing cardiac surgery in Bristol. His life was made hell and he had to emigrate. This was widely reported at the time, but it’s 30 years on and nothing has changed. The blame should not be placed solely on “managers”, however, when the person with the most influence in handling cases will be the medical director. We need to deal with a culture in which those doctors who have the closest relationships with the medical director can become beyond criticism. The farce…

by Benji Waterhouse Jonathan Cape 336pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99 On Benji Waterhouse’s first day as an NHS psychiatrist, he saw a “tortured” young woman with a history of self-harm who’d threatened to jump out of her flat window, said Rachel Clarke in The Guardian. He took her threat seriously, but a senior consultant was dismissive: the woman, he pointed out, couldn’t be about to kill herself, because she only lived on the second floor. It was the first step in what was to prove a dispiriting “revelation”: that modern NHS psychiatry is “less about saving minds and more about saving bed space, and finding plausible reasons to justify withholding care”. Now, Waterhouse (who moonlights as a standup comedian) has written what he describes as a “fly-on-the-padded-wall account” of…

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, 1951 (Penguin £9.99). I read this quintessential coming-of-age novel on the brink of my own stormy adolescence, and Holden Caulfield’s account of his alienation from the adult world and his war against phoneys was a huge influence on me. For years I tried to write like Salinger, with absolutely zero success. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2003 (Fourth Estate £8.99). Adichie’s powerful debut novel is narrated by a young Nigerian girl struggling to come to terms with a fanatically religious father who is a hero to many but a violent abuser at home. In many ways it’s a natural sequel to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005 (Faber £9.99). In the course of…

Programmes D-Day 80: We Were There Eighty years on, the surviving D-Day veterans – some of them over 100 years old – share their memories of the Normandy landings. Mon 27 May, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Cumbria’s Red Squirrels Documentary following the volunteers, charities and scientists working to protect the endangered species. Mon 27 May, BBC4 21:00 (60mins). Dispatches – Kill Zone: Inside Gaza Filmed over 200 days in Gaza, this is an unflinching look at the horrors faced by Palestinian civilians since the beginning of the war. Mon 27 May, C4 21:00 (75mins). Cheap Flights: What They Really Mean for You The BBC’s climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, and others explore the aviation industry’s efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Tue 28 May, BBC1 20:00 (60mins). Spotlight: Blood on the Dance…

Alice Munro 1931-2024 Alice Munro often embarked on what she thought was a novel, only to find that the narrative petered out after about 40 pages. But this hardly mattered, said The New Yorker, because as the citation for her Nobel Prize in Literature put it, Munro, who has died aged 92, could “accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel” within a short story. She produced more than a dozen collections of them, most focused on the lives of seemingly ordinary women and girls in rural communities in southern Ontario, where she had herself grown up. Acclaimed for the spare precision of her prose, and the intricacy of her plotting, she was often compared to Maupassant and Chekhov, said The Times. John Updike described her as a writer who…

Jim Simons “I did a lot of math, I made a lot of money, and I gave almost all of it away.” That was how Jim Simons – the Cold War codebreaker turned Wall Street fund manager – described his life. In fact, Simons, who has died aged 86, sparked a revolution, says the FT. The enigmatic “Quant King” was a pioneer of quantitative investing – using computer algorithms to drive decisions. His hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, spawned many imitators, but few matched its results. Between 1988 and 2018 it generated $100bn in profits, its main fund delivered an astounding 66% average annual return. Bloomberg described it as “the greatest money-making machine in Wall Street history”. The son of a Boston shoe-factory manager, Simons started out teaching maths and geometry…

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Craig Mackinlay, who received a standing ovation on his return to the Commons, eight months after being rushed to hospital with sepsis. The Tory MP for South Thanet was given a 5% chance of survival. He was placed in an induced coma, and had to have his hands and feet amputated. He has since been fitted with prosthetics. As he entered the Commons on Wednesday, his fellow MPs rose to their feet to applaud him. “We don’t allow clapping,” said speaker Lindsay Hoyle, “but this is an exception.” Have I Got News For You, which is launching stateside, 34 years after it first aired in the UK. The US version of the comedy panel show will be shown on CNN. Baguettes, with the release in France of a “scratch ’n’…

Labour has a ten-point lead over the SNP in Scotland. 29% of Scots say they now plan to vote SNP in this year’s general election, down four points since April; 39% say they’ll support Labour, up five points. This could give Labour 37 MPs in Scotland, up from two, and leave the SNP with 11. YouGov/The Times 38% of British Christians say they don’t like telling others about their faith. 38% of Jews and 29% of Muslims feel the same. Whitestone Insight/The Daily Telegraph The Philippines, Israel and the US have the highest share of people who identify as LGBT+, at 11% each, according to a Statista survey of 43 countries. In the UK, the proportion is 8%; in South Korea it is 3%.…

How to live off the land When Max Cotton decided to live for a year off the produce from his five-acre smallholding in Somerset, the former BBC reporter set himself strict rules, says Jane Fryer in the Daily Mail: no foraging, no bartering, no eating out, no gifts. He had polytunnels full of veg; made bread from his own wheat; used milk from his cow to make butter and yoghurt; and drank nettle tea. It was hard work and there were low points. At the start, he had so little in the ground that he lost weight, and found himself standing over his plants, urging them to grow. Later, there were gluts – a month of cantaloupe melons, a “very middle-class problem”. By the early spring, there was so little…

A farmer in the Netherlands has made what is thought to be the world’s first pig’s milk ice cream. Dubbed “pork ice cream”, it can be tasted by visitors to the farm Piggy’s Palace, in a village in the east of the Netherlands. “People really like it, we have almost run out of our first stock,” said the farm’s owner, Erik Stegink. “It’s a delicious ice cream,” was one visitor’s verdict. “A bit greasy, nice and creamy.” Pig’s milk contains around 8.5% fat, compared with 3.5% in cow’s milk and around 4% in human’s milk. A couple in their 20s have decided to live as if it were the 1940s, BBC Norfolk reports. Liberty Avery, 24, and Greg Kirby, 29, dress in period clothing, own a 1942 American Jeep and…

When Opal Sandy was a few days old, her parents were told that she was completely deaf. But 18 months on, having become the first person in the world to undergo a pioneering gene therapy treatment, she can hear sounds as soft as a whisper and is starting to talk. Opal, from Oxfordshire, was born with auditory neuropathy. A disruption to the nerve signals between the ear to the brain, it can be caused by a variation in a gene responsible for a protein called otoferlin, which affects the sound-sensing hair cells in the inner ear. In an effort to rectify this, doctors used a harmless virus to deliver a working copy of the gene to the cells in Opal’s right ear – a procedure that took 16 minutes. A…

“Increasingly”, it feels as though the Tories want to distract from their looming defeat by keeping everyone in “a constant state of outrage”, said Kristina Murkett in The Spectator. “Their latest target: sex education.” We were told last week that schools in England are being banned from teaching pupils under nine about sex, and from teaching pupils of any age about gender identity, to stop children being “exposed to disturbing content”. First, let’s be clear: it is not a ban, it is “guidance”. Second, what is this “disturbing content”? There is no sex education for under nines: what they have is relationship education, about things such as online safety, body privacy and healthy friendships. Human reproduction is taught to ten- and 11-year-olds, and if primary schools want sex ed to…

It’s early morning and, in central London, “the sun rises sleepily” over Regent’s Park’s lake and lawns, said Esther Addley in The Guardian. But on the road that encircles the park, the atmosphere is anything but lazy. With cars banned until 7am, scores of cyclists are pedalling furiously around the Outer Circle. Many are en route to work, others are members of cycle clubs doing timed laps in groups. To some, this scene is a positive sign that growing numbers are keeping fit and minimising pollution by getting on bikes. But the recent inquest into the death of Hilda Griffiths, 81, who was fatally injured by a bike in Regent’s Park in 2022, has cast these cyclists into a “political and media storm”. The cyclist, a banker, was going well…

An old adage of boxing is that a “good big ’un beats a good little ’un”, said Rick Broadbent in The Sunday Times. But on a “mesmerising” night in Riyadh, Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine “firmly debunked” that notion by defeating England’s Tyson Fury. In doing so, he claimed Fury’s WBC title to add to the three heavyweight belts he has already won – making him the “first undisputed heavyweight world champion since Lennox Lewis a quarter of a century ago”. While the Ukrainian, at 6ft 3in, hardly cuts a diminutive figure, he conceded a six-inch height advantage – and a seven-inch reach advantage – to his hulking opponent, who had never lost a professional fight. Usyk compensated with a brilliant strategic display, piling on “layers of confusion and frustration” to…

To The Times There are at least eight regulatory requirements and laws applicable to motorists and their vehicles but none of them, such as the requirement for insurance, are applicable to cyclists and their bikes, including the dockless cycles that are blighting London’s roads and pavements. Drivers and cyclists have to stop at a red light, but whereas the former can be photographed and fined via their numberplates, cyclists cannot. Regarding the dockless cycle outfits, I asked Lambeth Council months ago how much these companies paid for their licences to operate in the borough, and who was responsible for insurance if the bikes caused an accident. No response. As a campaigner in Melanie Phillips’s comment article concluded, the government has run scared from the cycling lobby. Local authorities may have…

by Susannah Gibson John Murray 352pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 The word “bluestocking” is today a “derisive term for a female intellectual”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times. But the original bluestockings – as Susannah Gibson shows in this revealing book – were a group of “brilliant thinkers determined to show that women could be every bit as rational, erudite and witty as men”. The movement was founded in the mid-1700s by the “colossally wealthy” Elizabeth Montagu, who held intellectual gatherings in her Mayfair home. These were attended by both women and men; the latter included Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson and the botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet – who gave the group its name after appearing in his “workaday blue woollen stockings”. One is left “gasping” at the bluestockings’ sheer…

How to eat 30 plants a week Apparently, it’s no longer enough to consume five portions of fruit and veg a day. The latest advice is that we should also be aiming to eat 30 different plants a week. Researchers on the British and American Gut Project found that people who eat a wide variety of plants have significantly more diverse gut microbiomes than those who follow more restricted diets. And gut diversity has been linked to a range of benefits, including healthier immune systems, and reduced risk of diabetes, obesity and cancer. Hence the emergence of the “30 plants a week” movement, which is backed by the likes of Dr Tim Spector and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (see recipe below), says Louise Eccles in The Times. But how feasible is it…

You can grow tomatoes on a sunny balcony or patio, but keep them under cover until late May, when it is a bit warmer. If you have a greenhouse, you’ll get an earlier crop and it will be less likely to be lost to blight (which is more prevalent in a wet summer). Crimson Crush and Lizzano are good blight-resistant varieties. Tomatoes grow either as tall, single-stem cordons, or as low-sprawling bushes. A grow bag is perfect for bush types; cordons work best in big plastic pots as the roots can go deeper and they’re easier to stake. Bush tomatoes tend to fruit earlier and over a shorter period of four to six weeks. Varieties such as Tumbler can be grown in hanging baskets, but will need more water. Cordon…

Roger Corman 1921-2024 Roger Corman described himself as the “Orson Welles of the Z movie”, said The Guardian. And as a director and producer, he was responsible for a lot of schlocky fare: his films include Attack of the Crab Monsters, She Gods of Shark Reef and The Brain Eaters. A handful of them have endured – including The Little Shop of Horrors, which he shot in two days and one night on a set left over from another film, and a series based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, starring Vincent Price. But his real legacy may be the training ground he provided for younger filmmakers. He gave Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme and Ron Howard some of their first work behind the camera. And he…

An old City saying holds that investing is like growing asparagus – “you should always have started five years ago”, says Ian Cowie in The Sunday Times. Here are some more horticultural tips: Enjoy your garden Investment can seem technical and tedious, but it’s fascinating and fruitful. “It’s fun to plant the seed of an idea, possibly opposing conventional wisdom, mulch it with our money, and find out who is right.” Mixed planting Variety is crucial. “You don’t want all your shrubs to bloom at once or be vulnerable to the same pests and weather conditions.” Great oaks from little acorns grow Give plants and portfolios constant care, and don’t neglect them. There’s no point “trying to make up for lost time with a flood after the flowers have died…