Table of contents for 1531 in The Week

Ever since Putin invaded Ukraine three years ago, one idea has been floated repeatedly, said Alexander Kolyandr in The Spectator: appropriating the $300bn or so in Russian sovereign assets that are frozen in the West, and using the money to help Kyiv. The plan has the support of the US and UK, but has stalled owing to the reluctance of countries such as France, Germany and Belgium – where the “lion’s share” of the assets are held – to back it. Instead, the West has settled for “half measures”: last year, the G7 agreed to use interest from the assets to provide $50bn in financial aid to Kyiv; the first $3.1bn was sent in January. But recent events in Washington have revived calls to go further, said Philip Gordon in…

Lake Windermere, after the Environment Secretary promised that, in future, “only rainwater” would enter it. Steve Reed acknowledged that it was being “choked by unacceptable levels of sewage pollution”, and vowed that this would end. The Duchess of Sussex, with news that her lifestyle series With Love, Meghan is returning for a second season, though the first has been poorly reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic, and only scraped into Netflix’s top ten ratings chart. Despite all the publicity, it notched up only 12.6 million hours viewed in its first week; by contrast, the top-watched show had 61.8 million hours.…

Labour plans “a rewiring of the British state”, to make the civil service more “agile” and “productive”, the Prime Minister announced this week. Under the “radical” reforms, ministers reportedly plan to shed about 10,000 of around 515,000 civil service jobs; to introduce performance-related pay for senior civil servants; and to give line managers more freedom to dismiss underperforming officials. More than 300 quangos were also expected to be “reorganised” or scrapped entirely. At NHS England, for instance, staff have been warned that 50% of central roles will be cut.…

My boyfriend the “spy cop” In 2010, Lisa Jones was on holiday with Mark Stone, her boyfriend of six years, when she noticed that in his passport he was named as Mark Kennedy. Nearby was a mobile she’d not seen him use much, on which she found emails from two children calling him “Dad”. A few days later, Lisa (not her real name) confronted him about it, says Zoë Beaty in The Independent. He made up some story, but eventually she would discover that he was an undercover police officer; and that what she’d believed to be a loving long-term relationship was actually a facade, orchestrated by a unit in the Met that had been infiltrating progressive groups for decades. Now 50, Lisa is still struggling to come to terms…

I read it in the tabloids An Air India flight from Chicago to Delhi was forced to turn around a few hours into its journey, owing to a “toilet disaster at 35,000 feet”, reports the Daily Mail. Eight of the plane’s 12 toilets became blocked and crew took the decision to divert back to Chicago, so as to protect “passenger safety”. An Air India spokesperson said that “polythene bags, rags and clothes had been flushed down” the loos, clogging the pipes, and apologised to any customers who had “faced discomfort”. A campaigner has pleaded with city officials to raise Dublin’s famous Molly Malone statue onto a plinth, to keep it out of reach of gropers. Jeanne Rynhart’s sculpture of the fishmonger has developed a shiny bosom from tourists touching it…

“Just a few short weeks ago, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party was riding high,” said Jon Ungoed-Thomas in The Observer. It was consistently polling above the Tories, and some surveys had it edging over Labour, too. Major donors were switching sides; Farage was boasting of his access to the new US president. But in the past month, being pro-Trump has started to seem a liability for a UK politician, not an asset; and now a civil war has erupted in Reform’s small band of five MPs. First, Rupert Lowe – MP for Great Yarmouth – told the Daily Mail that Farage was the “messianic” leader of a “protest party”; hours later, he was “dumped” by his parliamentary party. In a statement, Reform said that he was being investigated on charges…

When counter-terrorism police raided a “modest” former guest house in Great Yarmouth, in 2023, they found a trove of spy gadgets, said Mark Hollingsworth in The Independent: bugs, signal jammers, cameras hidden in glasses and ties and stuffed toys. From this “unlikely” setting in Norfolk, Orlin Roussev, a Bulgarian national, had been running a Russian-backed spy ring: he and his accomplices had hatched plans to “burgle, honey-trap, murder and kidnap” across Europe. Their paymaster was Jan Marsalek, a fugitive Austrian businessman wanted for his role in the €1.9bn Wirecard fraud, who now lives in Moscow and who told them that he was working for Russian intelligence; their targets included Russian dissidents and the journalist Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian who had exposed Kremlin links to the Salisbury poisonings. Last week, three…

After his disastrous spell at Tottenham in 2021, Nuno Espírito Santo was “written off by many” as a second-rate manager, said Tom Collomosse in the Daily Mail. This season, however, the Portuguese is “making a persuasive case to be named manager of the year”. Nottingham Forest, the club he joined in December 2023, have been the surprise package of the season. Last year, they narrowly avoided relegation; today, they stand third in the Premier League, two points ahead of fourth-placed Chelsea, and with Champions League qualification very much in their sights. And the gritty, determined style of football for which Nuno is known was fully on display against Manchester City last Saturday, said Jonathan Northcroft in The Sunday Times. Although Forest had only 31% of possession, they created “more dangerous…

Running time: 3hrs “It is all too easy to be cynical when movie stars turn to theatre,” said Houman Barekat in The New York Times, especially as some have not proved very good at it. Cate Blanchett, however, is a stage veteran; and in Thomas Ostermeier’s “ingenious” production of Chekhov’s The Seagull – a new version adapted by Ostermeier and playwright Duncan Macmillan – she dazzles as Irina Arkádina, the vain, attention-seeking actress, said Sarah Hemming in the FT. Blanchett tap dances, and at one point even does the splits, as she “mischievously splices her own fame with that of her character”. As promised, Ostermeier and Macmillan have blown away the dust surrounding the 1895 drama, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage. Characters are in modern dress; they vape…

As the Maliks prepare to break their fast at Ambridge Hall, there’s a knock at the door – it’s Akram, Azra’s husband, back from Pakistan. Azra admits she kept it a secret. As she and Akram visit the still uninhabitable Beechwood house, he suggests returning to Solihull; Azra wants to stay in Ambridge. Brad fasts so he’ll be hungry for the Tea Room’s pancake-eating competition, but as he and Zainab face off, he faints. Tracy and Jazzer rush over and miss their posh dinner date, and the whole competition is called off, to Natasha’s frustration. Emma and Pat continue to work on the clean water campaign, but Tony thinks it’s a waste of time. Joy sneaks Lillian and Brian into Home Farm; they’re dismayed to see what the Gills have…

● It’s not hard to grow flowers from seed if you give them the right conditions, says writer Clare Foster, but do read the seed packet for instructions. There are more varieties available as seed, and it is cheaper. ● Sow in seed trays if possible, as sowing directly into the soil leaves the seedlings vulnerable to weather and wildlife. And use a good-quality growing compost, especially for tiny seeds. For larger ones, you can use a regular compost, but break up lumps first. ● Sow larger seeds in modular seed trays: it saves having to prick out seedlings later on. ● Most plants need to be kept at 18-21°C to germinate, so keep them over a radiator or on a warm window sill until you see signs of germination.…

Peter Sichel 1922-2025 As a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Peter Sichel arrived in New York in 1941, and by late 1944 he was moving through France with General Patton’s forces, recruiting volunteers to infiltrate German lines as an agent for the OSS – the precursor of the CIA. After the War, he ran intelligence operations in Berlin, reporting on the Soviets in the eastern sector; then, in 1952, at the height of the Cold War, he was appointed head of the CIA’s eastern European operations, said The Daily Telegraph. But in 1960, Sichel, who has died aged 102, gave up his clandestine life to make his mark in a rather different sphere, as the populariser of Blue Nun – a brand of sweet German wine. He marketed it as…

Glass-ceiling progress The gender wage gap is one of ten indicators in The Economist’s annual “glass-ceiling index”. On most measures – including representation on boards and in parliaments – OECD countries improve each year, it reports. The exception is pay. The median gap in OECD countries remains “stuck” at 11.4%, despite policies designed to narrow it – in 2017, Britain began forcing big companies to publish wage-gap data. In some countries, such as Australia and Japan, it’s widening. At current rates of progress, PwC estimates it will take more than 46 years to close the gap. Reasons for inequality A still sizeable “motherhood penalty” bites particularly hard in countries with costly childcare, such as the US and the UK. Meanwhile, a new book, Fair Shake, argues that women continue to…

The week’s best shares Concurrent Technologies The Mail on Sunday Concurrent provides electronics and computing power for military equipment. Its rugged kit navigates vehicles and controls weapons across air, sea and battlefields. Strong growth expected. Buy. 180p. Howden Joinery Group The Times The kitchen cabinetmaker and seller is strongly cash generative with impressive margins. Fears of a sector contraction have hit shares, but Howden has invested in manufacturing capability and the long-term outlook is good. Buy. 740p. IBM The Daily Telegraph The US software giant is addressing growth markets: particularly AI and “hybrid cloud” software and storage ops. Margins are up, amid £5.3bn of cost savings. Also a leading player in quantum computing. Buy. $261.54. MTI Wireless Edge The Mail on Sunday MTI supplies antennae for drones and 5G towers…

Remember when Labour used to “howl down any attempt at welfare reform”, said Daniel Hannan in the Daily Mail – claiming it was “evidence that the Tories wanted to murder the poor?” Oh, how times change. With the economy flatlining and the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom all but wiped out, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is reportedly planning £6bn in cuts. There can be no fairer target for savings than our bloated social security bill, in particular sickness benefits. “No fewer than 2.8 million people say they are too ill to work”, up 600,000 since the pandemic – incentivised by “a welfare system that makes incapacity and disability payments more attractive than unemployment benefit”. By 2030 this will be “a £100bna-year crisis”, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. If Keir…

Eurostar passengers, thousands of whom were left stranded owing to the discovery of an unexploded Second World War bomb over a mile north of the Gard du Nord. The 500kg shell was found at a depth of about two metres during overnight works on the track, leading to the cancellation of all services on Friday. Residents of Birmingham, after the city’s refuse collectors went on an indefinite strike. Some 400 bin workers have been striking intermittently since January, in a row about roles being scrapped. Although agency workers are being drafted in, there have already been complaints about bin bags accumulating in the streets. Trump’s billionaires, with reports that the five richest men to attend the US president’s inauguration had lost a combined £161bn as a result of the market…

Brussels Tariff retaliation: The European Union hit back hard against Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 25% global tariff on steel and aluminium, by imposing tariffs of its own on up to €26bn worth of US imports. In a two-stage retaliation, tariffs will apply on US goods including jeans, bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorbikes from 1 April. Then, with the approval of EU members and following consultation with industry, further tariffs will be imposed in mid-April, covering a range of steel and aluminium products and agricultural produce. In a statement on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen (above), the European Commission president, said she regretted the measure. “Jobs are at stake, prices will go up, nobody needs that.” However, she said that the EU’s response was “strong but proportionate”, noting that the…

1 Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun by Claude Debussy, performed by the Orchestre National de Lyon 2 All That Meat and No Potatoes by Ed Kirkeby and Thomas “Fats” Waller, performed by Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars 3* Un bel dì vedremo by Giacomo Puccini, performed by Maria Callas and the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala (cond. Herbert von Karajan) 4 Getting to Know You by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, performed by Marni Nixon 5 I Want to Hold Your Hand by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed by The Beatles 6 A Sailboat In the Moonlight by Carmen Lombardo and John Jacob Loeb, performed by Billie Holiday 7 One Way or Another by Debbie Harry and Nigel Harrison, performed by Blondie 8 Hound Dog by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, performed by Willie…

Among Maga Republicans, scepticism towards the Ukrainian cause is rooted in America First isolationism and resentment of the costs. As Vice-President J.D. Vance put it in 2022: “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” It is also partly a foreign policy “realist” position: the war is seen as unwinnable and risks a global conflagration; Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth argued in Brussels last month that Europe should pay for its own defence, while the US pivots to deterring China. But in Trumpworld, scepticism towards Ukraine is often tinged with hostility – and admiration for Putin. Many on the Maga Right are impressed by Putin’s proclaimed support for Christian civilisation against “woke” values. Steve Bannon, Trump’s influential former strategist, sees Russia…

Opening the floodgates to dirty money Casey Michel The New Republic Make America safe for kleptocrats again! That’s what should be emblazoned across Donald Trump’s baseball cap, given his recent record, says Casey Michel. Since taking office, the president has announced a string of decisions that will benefit crooks. He has declared that the US will no longer enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which banned Americans from bribing foreign officials. He has dissolved the Department of Justice’s anti-kleptocracy task force, which had been seizing assets from sanctioned Russian oligarchs. And he has started hawking $5m “gold card” visas, selling US citizenship to any rich foreigner who wants it. Last week, he went even further by suspending America’s chief anti-money-laundering measure, the Corporate Transparency Act, which later this year was…

More than half of adults and a third of children and young people around the world will be overweight by 2050, a new study has warned. The analysis of data from 204 countries and territories found that an estimated 2.11 billion adults were overweight or obese in 2021 – up from 731 million in 1990. Without urgent action, this figure is projected to grow to 3.8 billion by 2050 – that’s 59% of all adults globally. Among the under-25s, 198 million were overweight or obese in 1990. This had risen to 493 million by 2021 and is expected to reach 746 million by 2050, reports The Lancet. In the UK alone, 80% of men and 74% of women are projected to be overweight or obese by 2050. “The unprecedented global…

It’s official, said Nick Timothy in The Daily Telegraph: “in the land of Magna Carta, habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights”, justice “is no longer blind”. From April, judges in England and Wales will have to treat criminals “differently depending on their religious beliefs, ethnicity and sexuality”, under new guidelines from the Sentencing Council. If the defendant is a woman, or transgender, or from an ethnic or faith minority, courts will have to compile a special pre-sentence report (PSR) outlining any mitigating factors that could justify a more lenient sentence. In other words, if an offender has the “misfortune” of being a white man, said the Daily Mail, he’ll likely face a tougher punishment for the same crime. There’s a name for this: “two-tier justice”. Keir Starmer’s Government furiously…

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”Shirley Chisholm, quoted in Parade “Poetry is the clear expression of mixed emotions.”Robert Frost, quoted in the Gunnison Country Times “One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a Congress.”Attrib. John Adams, quoted in the Murfreesboro Voice “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.”Margaret Thatcher, quoted in The Guardian “I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.”Jack Handey, quoted in The Knowledge “It’s OK to be a late bloomer as long as you don’t miss the flower show.”Jane Fonda, quoted in Elle “Contrarians drink…

For the past few years, India have been “comfortably the finest white-ball international side in the world”, said Tom Wigmore in The Daily Telegraph. And last Sunday, they “underscored” this by beating New Zealand by four wickets in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy. Their victory was built round their outstanding quartet of spinners, who asphyxiated New Zealand in the middle of their innings, after their batters had made a bright start. New Zealand’s total – 251-7 – felt insufficient, and so it proved: India duly knocked off the runs, despite their most celebrated batter, Virat Kohli, being dismissed second ball. With captain Rohit Sharma “thrashing a supreme 76”, India won with an over to spare. India are a brilliant team, but they did have a significant advantage, said…

To The Times You observe that the private provision of healthcare should complement the NHS, not supplant it. You also say that an increasing number of patients are willing to avoid long waiting times for treatment by paying for care. The growth in private care represents a widening gap between those who can afford to pay for private care and those who cannot. Other European countries with public health systems support the state funding by co-payments from patients. Patients who cannot afford to pay £15,000 for a hip replacement might be better able to pay, say, £3,000 towards it. This would finance a more productive NHS and enable waiting lists to be reduced, while reducing the widening gulf between those who can pay and those who cannot. Of course, there…

Where Nothing Sleeps by Denton Welch, 2005 (Tartarus Press, available used). If there is such a thing as a gay sensibility, Welch was one of its great exemplars. His acute feeling for the texture, minutiae and fragility of life is apparent on every page of this excellent compilation, in which his mostly autobiographical short stories are interspersed with extracts from his journals. London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew, 1851 (Wordsworth £4.99). An absolutely extraordinary four-part “cyclopedia of the industry, the want, and the vice of the great metropolis” in the mid-19th century. Mayhew based it on countless interviews with a huge variety of “street-folk”, in which one hears the real voices of those who populate Dickens’s novels. The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott, 1965-75 (Everyman £20 and…

Programmes Ancient Greece by Train with Alice Roberts Starting in Thessaloniki and Delphi, the historian traces the development of philosophy, art and theatre in ancient Greece. Sat 15 Mar, C4 20:00 (60mins). Protection New crime drama starring Happy Valley’s Siobhan Finneran as a witness-protection officer seeking redemption. Sun 16-Mon 17 Mar, ITV1 21:00 (60mins each). Panorama: Lockdown Kids: Five Years On Branwen Jeffreys investigates the impact of Covid lockdowns on children’s educational and social development. Mon 17 Mar, BBC1 20:00 (30mins). Thames Water: Inside the Crisis Two-part documentary filmed over six months, during which the beleaguered water company fights for its financial survival while battling crises and facing down campaigners. Mon 17-Tue 18 Mar, BBC2 21:00 (60mins each). Comic Relief: 40 Years of Funny A compilation from the telethon’s archives, with skits…

Morrisons and Tesco both sell Lykkeberg lumpfish caviar (£3 for 50g) which has small, dyed eggs. It is salty-sweet, but not quite as rich as the finest Beluga caviar. Wagyu beef is very tender with a delicate sweet flavour, and you can buy a “flavoursome” 200g wagyu ribeye steak for £16 at Waitrose, with a “marble score” of six. Aldi also has great wagyu (£6.99 for a sirloin steak, £19.99 for a 1kg joint). Sainsbury’s sells whole frozen Canadian cooked lobster (£10 for 350g), and you can buy six Loch Fyne oysters at Waitrose for £5.95 (down from £6.95). Most supermarkets sell legs of Ibérico ham on stands at Christmas. Jamon.co.uk has an award-winning Paleta Serrano Gran Reserva with a stand and knife for £79.95, or you can buy Ibérico ham croquetas…

The Connaught London Condé Nast Traveller’s favourite London hotel for 2025, The Connaught has changed a lot since it opened in 1815, but retains its “original spirit”. Thanks in part to its fabulous Mayfair location, it has an exceptionally lively atmosphere, says Lydia Bell. It also offers “deft” service, a superb art collection, spacious rooms including some “mega-suites”, and design that balances “antique beauty” with modern convenience. From the three-Michelin-starred Hélène Darroze to The Connaught Grill, its restaurants are great, and it also has three bars, and a “dinky” Aman Spa. Doubles from about £600; the-connaught.co.uk.…

Boots: made for walking? Finally, “one of the longest running stories in retail” has been “put to bed”, said Hugh Radojev in Retail Week – at least for the time being. Boots’s American parent company, the drugstore chain Walgreens, has been sold to the US private equity firm Sycamore Partners for $10bn. The question for British shoppers and pharmacists is what happens next? Does the Walgreens Boots Alliance “have a future” under new ownership? Or will the UK chemist – which was merged with Walgreens by the Italian empire-builder Stefano Pessina in 2014 – return to independence? “Sycamore has made a name for itself investing in struggling US retailers” and will doubtless be looking to “sell off units to drum up cash”, said Lex in the Financial Times. But it…

Lessons from an unhappy anniversary Brooke Masters Financial Times Twenty-five years ago this week, a multiyear US stock rally hit its peak and began a precipitous decline that would eventually wipe 77% off the tech-dominated Nasdaq index, says Brooke Masters. Are we now contemplating “dotcom bust 2.0”? Those fearing a repeat of 2000 point to the Magnificent Seven Big Tech stocks, which are now in “correction territory”. The parallels aren’t exact: you can’t compare the “profitable and impressive” Apple, Amazon and Microsoft with Pets.com. But questions about when exactly the billions of dollars being spent on AI will translate into long-term growth sound eerily familiar. “Some things change, but human beings, bless them, do not. All the signs of a classic bubble are upon us,” says financial journalist Jim Grant,…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1456 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 24 March. Send it to The Week Crossword 1456, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Flier to criticise a father’s city (5,5) 6 Tender loving care involving a powder (4) 9 Ditch fleece for something heavier! (6,4) 10 Eccentric cone, previously (4) 12 Go for races on these? (7,7) 14 Smart wife invested in rag (6) 15 Single workman gets latitude (4,4) 17 Diverse trades so troubled (8) 19 Extent of dash in…

Four in ten British adults have not read or listened to a book in the past year, a YouGov survey has found. The polling also revealed various splits in reading habits: more women (66%) have read a book in the past year than men (53%); and Labour voters (70%) are more likely to have read one than Lib Dem voters (64%), Tory voters (63%) and Reform UK voters (51%). Overall, 19% of respondents reported reading one to four books in the past year; 6% had read more than 50. Gender-critical campaigners have accused St John’s Ambulance of “erasing women” by offering advice on how to perform CPR on “a person with breasts”. Its website notes that “people with breasts are statistically less likely to receive bystander CPR than men”.…

The captain of a cargo ship has been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter, following the collision of two vessels in the North Sea on Monday. The 59-year-old, a Russian national, was the captain of the Solong, a Portuguese-flagged container ship that had collided with the US-registered Stena Immaculate, in thick fog off the Yorkshire coast. The collision was so forceful that the Stena, which was at anchor at the time and carrying 220,000 barrels of jet fuel for the US military, was pushed some 200 metres: within minutes, both vessels were ablaze. An unknown quantity of jet fuel was spilled, though reports that the Solong had been carrying sodium cyanide proved unfounded. HM Coastguard said 36 out of 37 crew had been rescued; one was taken to hospital.…

Ottawa Carney wins: The former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has been elected leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party, making him his country’s prime minister-designate. The economist, who has never held political office and is not an MP, won nearly 86% of the members’ votes. He replaces Justin Trudeau, who announced in January he would step down. The left-leaning Liberals had seemed set for defeat in the general election due this year, but its fortunes have been revived by Donald Trump’s threats to annex the country, and the sense that a strong unified response is required. Last week, Trudeau accused Trump of imposing 25% tariffs on Canadian goods in an effort to collapse Canada’s economy and expedite its annexation – something…

“For weeks we have listened to experts, men and women trying to explain Donald Trump’s presidency, and all I’ve heard that makes any sense whatsoever is a John Mulaney comedy routine from Trump’s first presidency, which he likened to a horse being loose in a hospital: ‘I have no idea what’s going to happen next, and neither do any of you and neither do your parents. Because there’s a horse loose in a hospital. They try to find experts, they’re like, We’re joined now by a man who once saw a bird in the airport… It’s like, get out of here with that shit. We’ve all seen a bird in the airport. This is a horse. Loose. In a hospital.’” Martin Samuel in The Times…

Enfeebled by the US military embrace… Sylvia Pfeifer et al Financial Times What good is it having weapons if you can’t use them? That’s the question haunting Europe, say Sylvia Pfeifer et al. Washington’s abrupt foreign policy pivot has brought home just how dependent European nations are on the US for the continued functioning of their military hardware: 55% of their defence equipment imports, including more than half of their advanced combat aircraft, are bought from the US. Without constant software updates and US spare parts, this equipment is useless. What’s the point in Denmark sending F-35 jets to protect Greenland from Donald Trump when the US could effectively ground them. The US Reaper drones used by many European nations are useless without the US-provided satellite communication links and software.…

We sleep more than our ancestors In our “always on” world, there is a feeling that no one is getting enough sleep; and that the time we spend staring at screens is preventing us from sleeping well. Yet according to new research, we get more – and better – sleep than our ancestors in pre-industrial times are likely to have done. For a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists in Canada analysed data on the sleep patterns of 866 people in 54 sleep studies from around the world – from the residents of big cities to the members of hunter-gatherer tribes. They found that the participants living in industrial societies slept more, clocking up an average of 7.1 hours a night compared with just 6.4…

Mark Zuckerberg made himself centre stage at his wife Priscilla Chan’s 40th birthday party – stunning guests by whipping off his black tux to reveal a sparkly, skin-tight jumpsuit. The Meta CEO then jumped off a grand piano and belted out a song in Chan’s honour, a performance he then uploaded to his Instagram account. The post attracted comments speculating that the billionaire is having a midlife crisis – Zuckerberg having undergone a major style makeover in recent months, swapping out his grey T-shirts for designer clothes and growing his hair. “Mark’s new update is very human,” noted one commenter. Prue Leith has been a Bake Off judge for seven years, but she still hasn’t come to terms with her co-hosts’ sense of humour. She says she can’t say the…

“Few public figures have exploded on to the world stage quite like US Vice-President J.D. Vance,” said Dominic Sandbrook in The Times. In his first major foreign speech, at the Munich Security Conference, he caused a stink by berating European leaders about free speech. After that, he laid into Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the Oval Office for supposedly showing insufficient gratitude to President Trump. And he then upset more people by dismissing talk of UK and French peacekeepers in Ukraine, saying a US mineral deal would protect the nation better than “20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”. One assumes copies of Vance’s misery memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, aren’t “flying off the shelves in Royal Wootton Bassett”. Vance has swiftly established himself…

Since becoming England’s coach in 2022, Steve Borthwick has consistently talked about his side’s determination to abandon “kicking and defensive scrapping” in favour of high-tempo, possession-orientated rugby, said Gavin Mairs in The Daily Telegraph. However, supporters of the team have often wondered when, if ever, they’d actually get to “see the fruits of this commitment”. Certainly, there were few signs of it during the 2023 World Cup or last autumn’s internationals. And against Scotland last month, their fans’ frustration turned to boos as England reverted to their customary “tactical straitjacket”. Yet against Italy last Sunday, the side’s deeds finally matched Borthwick’s words. “In glorious spring sunshine”, England put seven tries past Gonzalo Quesada’s side to earn a 47-24 victory. It wasn’t all plain sailing: they had to cope with the…

Tennis Emma Raducanu has appointed Vladimir Platenik as her new coach on a trial basis. He watched her lose her first-round match in Indian Wells last week. Football Liverpool beat Arsenal 1-0 in the quarter-final of the women’s FA Cup. Athletics Team GB’s Melissa Courtney-Bryant won silver in the 3,000m at the European Indoor Championships. George Mills also won silver, in the men’s 3,000m, as did the women’s 4x400m team. Cricket Harry Brook has withdrawn from the IPL, in order to commit to England.…

Mickey 17 2hrs 17mins (15) A topical sci-fi satire from the director of Parasite Although filmed three years ago, Bong Joon-ho’s hotly anticipated follow-up to his Oscar-winning satire Parasite feels “uncomfortably timely”, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. Set in 2054, it stars Mark Ruffalo as a “vain, populist leader” (with legions of followers in slogan-daubed red hats) who wants to populate a distant ice planet with “superior” people. Our protagonist is Mickey (Robert Pattinson), who is not one of those people but is instead an “expendable”, a subclass of disposable humans, and he’s on the mission to serve as a human guinea pig, absorbing dangerous levels of radiation and being exposed to unknown space creatures. In the process, this “likeable doofus” repeatedly dies, and is recreated on a biological…

Sir Jim Ratcliffe Thousands of Manchester United fans staged a protest before the game against Arsenal last Sunday, wearing black to mourn a club “slowly dying” under the co-ownership of the US Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratcliffe, said The Guardian. But the Ineos tycoon, who bought a 28.94% stake a year ago and has complete control over the football operation, has come out fighting. Declaring the club would be “bust by Christmas” were it not for his tough medicine of cuts and redundancies, he unveiled plans for a £2bn new stadium designed by Sir Norman Foster, predicting it would become “a global destination” – “the Eiffel Tower of the North”. The multibillionaire has faced tough challenges building his chemicals conglomerate, said Sam Wallace in The Daily Telegraph. But according…