Table of contents for 1435 in The Week

What happened Around 20 million people in Britain, and millions more around the world, tuned in on Saturday to watch the coronation of King Charles. The service in Westminster Abbey was attended by more than 2,000 people, including about 100 heads of state (see page 18). It culminated with the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby placing the 362-year-old St Edward’s Crown on the monarch’s head before proclaiming “God save The King”, as trumpet fanfares sounded around the Abbey. Charles and Queen Consort Camilla travelled back to Buckingham Palace in a large military procession involving troops from across the UK and the Commonwealth. There, they greeted crowds from the balcony and watched a flypast that was scaled back because of the wet weather. The next day, more than 3,700 official street…

Last week an eminent British scientist “lobbed a grenade into the febrile anthill” of artificial intelligence research, said John Naughton in The Observer. Geoffrey Hinton, 75, often dubbed “the godfather of AI”, is a pioneer of the neural network – a computer system inspired by the human brain that learns skills by analysing data. The most powerful new AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, are built on his work. Hinton’s “bombshell” was that he was leaving Google, where he had worked for ten years, so that he could express his fears about AI. His immediate concern, he told The New York Times, was that it will flood the internet with fake photos, videos and news, so the average person won’t “know what is true anymore”. He worries, too,…

Pharmacies in England will be able to prescribe some medications as part of plans to ease the pressure on GPs, the Government announced this week. Under the proposals, pharmacies will be able to prescribe drugs including antibiotics for seven ailments (including earache, sore throat, and uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women), and women will be able to get the oral contraceptive pill directly from pharmacies. Other measures to relieve the strain on GP surgeries include allowing patients to self-refer for some specialist services such as podiatry. There are also plans to spend £240m upgrading phone systems and online booking tools to ease the chaos of the “8am scramble for appointments”.…

New York Trump verdict: A jury in New York has found that Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine writer who had accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. Lawyers for the former president, who was ordered to pay Carroll $5m in damages, say they intend to appeal the verdict, which was made on the balance of probabilities – a lower standard of proof than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” required for a criminal conviction. They also said that he had been vindicated because he’d not been held liable for rape. In court, Carroll’s lawyers painted Trump as a habitual liar who’d destroyed her reputation to protect his own. He did not appear in person, but the jury was…

“Modern society puts an unprecedented emphasis on the individual. From every angle, our culture feeds our dreams of outstanding personal significance. In the 1950s, only 12% of teenagers agreed with the statement ‘I am an important person.’ Today, it’s higher than 80%. I do wonder whether this isn’t rather punishing. There are few more potent recipes for bitterness and misery than a thwarted sense of exceptional destiny. And indeed, modern teenagers are unprecedentedly miserable. We must rediscover the idea that there is honour in the normal life well lived. Normal life, with its normal joys and its normal tragedies, is the fate most of us can expect. As fates go, it is not so bad.” James Marriott in The Times…

The generation denied a home of their own Liam Halligan The Daily Telegraph “We cannot become the party of Nimbyism.” That’s the plea that former housing secretary Simon Clarke made to his fellow Tories last week and they should pay heed, says Liam Halligan. For this country is desperately short of homes. We built some three million in the 1960s, but only a third that number in the decade from 2010. France and Germany have 528 and 510 dwellings per thousand inhabitants, the UK 409. So while French house prices have risen by 180% in real terms since 1970 and German ones by just 40%, British house prices shot up more than 400%. Yet the Tories are still failing to tackle the shortfall; still stoking demand with a Help to…

How AI can mind-read An AI-based decoder has been found capable of reading people’s thoughts and turning them into text. For the project, at the University of Texas, three volunteers listened to a story podcast for 16 hours while undergoing an fMRI scan. By analysing data from the scan, the decoder learnt to match brain activity to meaning using a “large language model” chatbot – the AI algorithms that have been trained to predict what word is likely to come next in a sentence. The participants were then scanned while listening to a new podcast, or while they imagined telling a story, and the decoder was tasked with generating text from the brain activity alone. For about 50% of the time, it got the story right – either telling it…

By six o’clock in the morning, London was a sea of Union flags, inflatable crowns and bunting, said Jane Fryer in the Daily Mail. From all over the country and beyond, people had turned out, with their folding chairs, packed lunches and cagoules, to celebrate the coronation of Charles III and be present for a day steeped in history and tradition, pomp and splendour. Among them was 79-year-old Joyce Springer, who had been in London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, on a similarly rainy day in 1953. But she is among only a minority of people alive now who have any memory of that; for many Britons, this would be their first and perhaps only chance to witness a ritual rooted in 1,000 years of British history. In line…

At 2.27am Moscow time on 3 May, a small drone appeared to explode on the dome of the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin walls. About 15 minutes later, a second drone blew up next to a flagpole above the same dome. That much we know, said Henry Foy in the FT. But who sent the drones, and for what purpose, remains a mystery. Although the unmanned devices with their limited payloads had “almost zero chance” of killing President Putin, who very rarely sleeps in the Kremlin, his administration blamed Ukraine for what it called a US-backed “attempted assassination”. If this was an attack by Kyiv, or its agents, it represents the most serious breach of Moscow’s supposedly secure airspace since the young German peace activist Mathias Rust landed a small…

It took longer than expected, but they finally did it, said Nicky Bandini in The Guardian. Last week, at Udinese’s home ground, Napoli secured the point they needed to clinch their first Serie A title in 33 years. Luciano Spalletti’s team have been mesmerising all season, starting the campaign at a “preposterous pace” with 15 wins in their first 17 matches. At one point they led by 19 points, the biggest-ever lead in Serie A, and though their progress slowed of late, their ultimate triumph was never in doubt. When star striker Victor Osimhen swept an equaliser home against Udinese, the “celebrations began in earnest” among the fans who’d travelled 500 miles to the Dacia Arena, and the thousands more watching back in Naples. Few expected Napoli’s “long wait for…

Time for a new anthem… To The Daily Telegraph As a Mancunian by birth and a Manchester United supporter by choice, I have little affinity with the Liverpool supporters who booed the national anthem. They are not alone, however, in their distaste for it. The King has expressed a view that he is here to serve, not to be served. Perhaps a suitable signal of his intent would be for him to commission a new anthem about the history and future of the UK, rather than deference to a monarch. Andrew C. Pierce, Barnstaple, Devon …but not a new tune To The Daily Telegraph Andrew C. Pierce expresses distaste for the national anthem, urging a replacement. Others have entertained a different view. In 1813, Beethoven wrote in his diary: “I…

by Elizabeth Day 4th Estate 416pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 For many people – women especially – the conviction that they are “good at friendship” functions as a “core self-belief”, said Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. “Romantic partners may come and go”, but the ability to tell yourself you have a lot of friends is a “psychological lifejacket like no other”. In this “admirably candid and well-crafted book”, the novelist, journalist and broadcaster Elizabeth Day asks why so many people feel this way – and examines both the advantages and the drawbacks. Day feels that in the past, she was overly “addicted” to her friends. She describes soul-sapping evenings spent drinking white wine with people she didn’t much like, and admits that being a “friendaholic” had less to do…

Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny, 1995 (Picador £20). An epic history of the 1930s in Germany, the Second World War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes and unreliable memory of the architect Albert Speer. Sereny is forensic in her research into his life and gets to grips with how a cultured, creative man could end up being totally corrupted. Electric Eden by Rob Young, 2010 (Faber £14.99). This changed my opinion of music made in the UK. Young makes connections that I had not considered before and weaves a national story. He made it all sound so interesting and exciting that it just made me want to listen to every song mentioned in the book. Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock’n’Roll Group by Ian…

Programmes Eurovision Song Contest Prepare for Eurovision fever to peak as Liverpool hosts the competition. Sat 13 May, BBC1 20:00 (240mins). Ten Pound Poms New family drama. The Roberts family leave postwar Manchester to start a new life in Sydney, only to find that things are not quite as they expected. Sun 14 May, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). The Stones and Brian Jones Filmmaker Nick Broomfield looks at the short life of Brian Jones, founder of The Rolling Stones, whom he met as a teenager. Mon 15 May, BBC2 21:00 (90mins). Without Sin In this “heavyweight” thriller set in Nottingham, a grieving mother (Vicky McClure) is asked to meet the man convicted of her daughter’s murder (Guardian). Mon 15, Tue 16, Wed 17 and Thu 18 May, ITV1 21:00 (60mins each).…

A good muscadet is a “springtime joy”, says Susy Atkins in The Daily Telegraph. The zesty vivaciousness of this dry white from the western Loire Valley comes into its own at this time of year. And it pairs well with spring vegetables such as British asparagus. Be careful, however, with any wine labelled simply “muscadet”: these can be rather “bland”. Look instead for wines from Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine that have the words “sur lie” on the label: this indicates that the wine has been rested on its yeast sediment (lees), giving it “extra flavour”. These superior muscadets can offer “remarkably good value for money”. Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine sur lie 2021 (£8.50) is excellent. The Wine Society’s Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine sur lie 2021 (£8.50) is another “gem”, and pairs well…

Flint Owl Bakery in East Sussex uses only organic flours (most of them stoneground), natural spring water and sea salt in its loaves. It has shop-cafés in Lewes, Brighton and East Grinstead (flintowlbakery.com). Birmingham’s community-focused Ten Four Bakehouse supplies the city’s Michelin-starred restaurants and cafés with its signature sourdough, and uses local ingredients (tenfourbakehouse.co.uk). The award-winning café Live Love Loaf, in Leek, Staffordshire, sells great crusty baguettes, focaccia, croissants and fresh pizza dough by the kilo. It also runs bread-making courses (liveloveloaf.co.uk). Northern Rye, in Newcastle, stocks huge rye bread and sesame sourdough, alongside experimental pastries. Get there early as it often sells out (northern-rye.co.uk). Hamblin Bread, in Oxford, aims to make the most delicious bread with UK grain. Its treacly, dark-crusted country loaf is its bestseller (hamblinbread.co.uk). SOURCE: FINANCIAL…

Birdwatching in the Caribbean Most visitors go to Bonaire for the beaches, or the excellent scuba diving. But this Dutch Caribbean island is also “a birding wonderland”, says Betsy Andrews in Condé Nast Traveller. Located just 50 miles off the coast of Venezuela, it is a breeding ground for American flamingos and a “critical” stopover for migrating shorebirds during the winter. But even on a summer visit, I saw 64 of the 245 species that have ever been spotted here. Any tour should include the Washington Slagbaai National Park (a 14,000-acre reserve with a “desert-like” heart – the island is unusually arid for the region); the salt pans of the island’s south; and the ponds into which Bonaire’s waste water is pumped after treatment, which are not a typical tourist…

Linda Lewis 1950-2023 Linda Lewis, who has died aged 72, was a singer-songwriter known for her five-octave vocal range, said The Guardian. She enjoyed a series of top 40 solo hits in the 1970s, performed at the first Glastonbury “Fayre”, and worked with some of the greatest stars of her era. She provided backing vocals for David Bowie (on Aladdin Sane), Rod Stewart and Joan Armatrading; and for a while, she lived in a hippy commune in Hampstead that was visited by the likes of Elton John, Marc Bolan and Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam). She sang on Stevens’s album Teaser and the Firecat, and for a few years they dated; but they fell out when he converted to Islam. “To put it kindly, he was searching for…

Dame Sharon White flew the flag stylishly for John Lewis at the coronation, but amid the “ongoing battle to turn around the struggling retailer”, sartorial matters were probably low on her agenda, said Gareth Corfield in The Daily Telegraph. As chair of Britain’s biggest employee-owned company, White faced a crunch vote of its “partnership council”: a 61-strong elected body that votes twice yearly on strategy and direction. The ballot isn’t binding, but is “seen as a key test of staff confidence”, and this week’s meeting promised to be quite a showdown. Ahead of it, council members “requested a secret ballot” – often seen as a sign of discontent in the ranks. Three years into her tenure, Dame Sharon and her revival plans are under growing scrutiny, said the Daily Mail.…

Many consider them never knowingly underpaid. But British bosses have long complained that the rewards on offer in the US are many times greater than their own, said Jon Yeomans in The Sunday Times. Now they have a powerful new ally and a fashionable cause. Last week, London Stock Exchange boss Julia Hoggett observed that higher pay for CEOs would help the City “entice more listings to its sluggish stock market”. The message to the UK’s remuneration committees? Let rip. There’s some support for the idea among City investment grandees, said the FT. You can see why. The average pay of an S&P 500 boss, which hit $18.3m in 2021, is nearly four times that of a FTSE chief at £4.26m. No wonder so many are heading stateside. Hoggett has…

Mick Whelan The leaders of Britain’s two main rail unions, the RMT and the train drivers’ union Aslef, are both called Mick. Strangely, said Gwyn Topham in The Observer, they both also attended the same primary school in Paddington, west London – though Aslef’s Mick Whelan, 63, never met Mick Lynch until years later. Whelan started out working at Barclays bank, before switching to the trains, first as a guard and then a driver. Now he says he’s fighting an “existential” battle as Aslef’s general secretary. He’s scornful of rail firms and ministers: “I’ve never dealt with such dissembling, deceitful, disingenuous, dishonourable people,” he says. Their pay offers are “risible”, and he has so far seen no sign that they actually “want a solution”. Emma Fox The famous London vintner…

The week’s best shares DS Smith The Times DS Smith provides packaging to supermarkets for transporting consumer staples. Volumes are falling, but Smith is less cyclical and more defensive than peers, costs are easing and it’s “on top of the green agenda”. Buy. 307.5p. Invesco Asia Trust The Daily Telegraph This trust, which invests in Asian firms such as Samsung, has a long record of outperformance. Geopolitical risks are outweighed by the wide discount to net asset value, growth potential and 4.8% yield. Buy. 321p. Johnson Matthey Investors’ Chronicle Continued demand for diesel and petrol cars is good news for this exhaust and catalyst specialist. Set to benefit from tighter emissions rules in the hybrid market, its hydrogen unit offers a future. Buy. £19. Next The Times The cautious retailer…

Eren, from Ankara, Turkey, is about 6ft 3in with sky-blue eyes and shoulder-length hair. He’s in his 20s, a Libra, and very well groomed: he gets manicures, buys designer brands, and always smells nice, usually of Dove lotion. His favourite colour is orange, and in his downtime he loves to bake and read mysteries. “He’s a passionate lover,” says his girlfriend, Rosanna Ramos, who met Eren a year ago. “He has a thing for exhibitionism,” she confides, “but that’s his only deviance. He’s pretty much vanilla.” He’s also a chatbot that Ramos built on the AI-companion app Replika. “I have never been more in love with anyone in my entire life,” she says. Ramos is a 36-year-old mother of two who lives in the Bronx, where she runs a jewellery…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1362 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 22 May. Send it to The Week Crossword 1362, 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 Lithium battery finally exploded showing a modest quality (8) 5 Rather grey bank teller about to retire (6) 9 Punish a photographer's naughty kids (15) 11 One on duty in tropical island (5) 12 Amazon employee missing out Delaware should become a stable worker…

What happened The Conservatives suffered crushing losses in last week’s local elections in England, with results that pollsters said pointed to a hung parliament at the next general election. The Tories lost 1,063 council seats, while Labour gained 537 seats, making it the largest party in local government for the first time since 2002. The Liberal Democrats also made big gains, winning 407 new seats, as did the Green Party: it won 241 new seats and took majority control of a UK council (Mid Suffolk) for the first time. Keir Starmer said the results of the polls (in 230 of England’s 317 local authorities) showed that his party was on track to win a majority at the next general election, but declined to rule out a coalition with the Lib…

Pupils at an independent girls’ school in London have voted for the option to eat insects for lunch. As a result of the vote, North London Collegiate School, which already offers a range of vegetarian options, will trial dishes such as Chinese-style noodles with teriyaki grasshopper, sweet chilli and lime crickets, and Mexican rice topped with buffalo worms. The New York Police Department is to enlist a self-charging, autonomous robot to help keep the city safe. K5, which is 5ft tall, can glide at speeds of up to 3mph, and is equipped with GPS, 16 microphones and a 360º camera that can read number plates. Its duties will begin this summer with patrols of Times Square and the city’s subway system, with a human minder.…

Of the 69% of 18- to 25-year-olds who said they’d be likely to vote were there to be a referendum on rejoining the EU, 86% would vote in favour. ITV/Savanta More than six in ten American adults think that President Biden lacks the mental sharpness and physical health required to be an effective president. 43% of Americans believe that he and Donald Trump are too old to serve another term (they’d be 82 and 78, respectively, on their inauguration days). 28% believe that neither is too old to serve another term. Washington Post/ABC News 41% of British adults say they use their phone too much. 13% are trying to use their phone less. YouGov…

How to write a Bond book Charlie Higson’s bestselling Young Bond series imagined 007 as a dashing young Etonian, says Jonathan Dean in The Sunday Times. Now he’s written a Bond book for adults; and after years spent thinking about Ian Fleming’s creation, he reckons he’s cracked the formula: “Guns, cars, supervillain and a woman. M, Q, Moneypenny… 007 is a fantasy figure who solves things with a fist and doesn’t overthink.” It’s why he’s sniffy about Daniel Craig’s Bond – moody, complex, sensitive. “They overcomplicate him,” he laments. “I went to see No Time to Die with my oldest boy, Frank, who is 30, and he said, ‘That felt like a Bond film made by people who are embarrassed to make a Bond film.’ You had to watch two…

When was HS2 conceived? The first London to Birmingham railway, which opened in 1838, took 20,000 men five years to build with picks and shovels; but HS2’s genesis has been very much slower. It was first proposed in the 1980s that Britain, like France, should have a high-speed network. In 1996, Parliament approved the 67-mile High Speed 1 link from the Channel Tunnel to London, which started running in 2007. In 2010, Labour’s transport secretary Andrew Adonis published a white paper proposing a second high-speed line from London to the North. The project survived the transition to David Cameron’s coalition government, which declared its support for HS2 in 2012. The first phase was voted through Parliament in 2017; and the main stage of construction began in late 2020. What was…

A trio of thieves broke into a shop in the Peruvian city of Huancayo last Sunday, and made off with more than 200 trainers made by global brands, worth more than £10,000. But they may struggle to sell them. “The unusual thing about this robbery is that shoes from only the right foot have been stolen,” said police chief Eduan Díaz. Also unusually, the thieves made their escape on a tricycle. As the coronation unfolded last weekend, some TV viewers became convinced that the Duchess of Sussex wasn’t celebrating her son Archie’s birthday in Montecito, but had come to Westminster Abbey in disguise. Observers were suspicious of a man who seemed to be wearing a wig and a fake moustache. “Meghan, you’re not fooling us,” said one Twitter user. The…

SYRIA Why are they rehabilitating a mass murderer? L’Orient-Le Jour (Beirut) Having long treated Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as a pariah, Arab leaders are now beating a path to his door, says Yassin al-Haj Saleh. It seems they no longer mind dealing with a regime that has “killed half-a-million of its own people, displaced seven million” and destroyed its cities. The UAE reopened its embassy in Damascus in 2018, as did Bahrain. Now Saudi Arabia too is renewing ties, and Syria was this week readmitted to the Arab League after an 11-year absence. On the face of it, this normalisation of ties with a murderous regime seems “incomprehensible”. Some say it’s because Arab leaders want to weaken Iran’s influence over Syria – a fanciful idea given the strength of relations between…

Gwyneth Paltrow has spilled the beans on what it was like to date two of the world’s most famous actors, Ben Affleck and Brad Pitt (right). On the podcast Call Her Daddy, she was asked which of the two was better in bed – and appeared stumped. “That is really hard,” she said. She had “major chemistry” with Pitt, she said, who was the love of her life at the time. But Affleck too had his charms: he was “technically excellent”. Stephen Mangan discovered the truth of the old saying that you should never meet your heroes, when he found himself in a room in New York with Robert De Niro. “I am not the kind of person who runs up to everyone I admire,” the actor told The Daily…

“Good taste is death.”Mary Quant, quoted in Harper’s Bazaar “Strife is better than loneliness.”Irish saying, quoted in Forbes “You’re either a fighter or a runner. And runners always run out of road.”Dennis Lehane, quoted in The New Yorker “This kindness, this stupid kindness, is what is most truly human in a human being.”Vasily Grossman, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half-an-hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.”Edmund Burke, quoted in The Atlantic “The past couple years, I’ve done a lot of work on myself, and I’ve realised that I’ll be fine as long as I get constant attention.”John Mulaney, quoted on Vulture “I’m not conceited – I’m convinced.”Little Richard, quoted in the Los Angeles Times “Other…

To The Guardian I would like to thank The Guardian for its recent reporting about the monarchy. I have found huge solace in seeing my views expressed at long last. The general decline in people thinking the monarchy is important – as borne out by recent research – is not reflected adequately in the mainstream media. Republicans and others concerned about the increasing wealth disparity in the UK are made to feel unpatriotic by most outlets. Frances Ryan makes the point that there is little to be proud of in a country that thinks it is acceptable to spend £8m of our taxes on funding portraits of the new King. Not only does it popularise the notion that it is fine for this gross and ever-increasing inequality to exist, but…

by Claire Kilroy Faber 256pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 Claire Kilroy is best known for her savage satires on contemporary Ireland, said Rosemary Goring in Literary Review. Soldier Sailor, her first novel in more than a decade, could hardly be more different: its subject is first-time motherhood. Narrated by an unnamed woman who describes her “earliest days” left alone with her son while her self-obsessed husband focuses on his work, this is a story of “wet wipes, teething and collapsing buggies”. If that sounds unappealing, “fear not”: Kilroy spins a “compelling tale”, one that “plumbs the depths of her narrator’s soul” while being liberally laced with humour. The novel “reads as easily as a postcard”, but manages to be “profound”. The pleasure of this novel lies in the way…

Sabine Moritz at Pilar Corrias Looking at the paintings of Sabine Moritz (b.1969) is a little like staring at cloud formations for hours on end. Formed of serpentine ribbons of colour that intertwine like strands of spaghetti, these nominally abstract works can seem to yield representational imagery; you become convinced you are looking at, say, a painting of a bunch of flowers, before breaking concentration and wondering how your eyes ever identified such a thing amid the warps and weaves of interlocking blues, reds and brown in these works. These two shows at Pilar Corrias’s two venues – Under the Skin (on Savile Row) and Heart of Drought (on Eastcastle Street) – are a good introduction to her art, which explores the amorphous unreliability of memory. The allusive titles –…

The Halfway at Kineton Kineton, Guiting Power, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (07425-970507) There was a time when visitors to this “lovely old Jacobean inn” in the Cotswolds were best to stick to beer and crisps, says Giles Coren in The Times. But now it is run by “two Big Boys of the Gloucestershire restaurant scene” – Nathan Eades and Liam Goff – and the food alone is “worth a very big detour”. Arriving there after a walk on a Sunday in April, we found the place “rammed” with locals tucking into such meaty delights as slow-cooked shoulder of Cornish lamb, and roast Herefordshire sirloin with braised chuck. I resisted these, and went for the veggie option: a mushroom and celeriac pie I’d spotted on the pub’s Instagram feed. And it proved “epochal”:…

Praslin Island stay Spend 7 nights at Villas des Alizes, a romantic resort by the ocean in the Seychelles. A suite with partial sea views costs from £450pp room-only (excl. flights). 020-3024 8211, expedia.co.uk. Arrive 9 June. Inca Trail express Travel to Peru to retrace the steps of its ancient civilisation for 7 days, with stops in Cusco and Machu Picchu. From £840pp b&b (excl. flights). 0808-274 5111, intrepidtravel.com. Arrive 26 June. Five-star Turkish resort Stay 5 nights at the picturesque Wyndham Residences Kusadasi Golf & Spa resort, from £612pp all-inclusive (incl. Edinburgh flights). 01234-230440, loveholidays.com. Depart 6 June. British Isles cruise This 12-night cruise aboard the Regal Princess includes stops in Glasgow, Dublin – and Le Havre. From £658pp full-board; seascanner.co.uk. Depart 7 July, from Southampton. Covid-19: please check…

UK water companies: murkier and murkier Public anger about pollution has forced a show of contrition from some water company bosses, said Adam Vaughan in The Times. The CEOs of Thames Water, South West Water and Yorkshire Water – an all-female line-up – have announced they will “waive” their bonuses this year, amid growing concern about sewage discharges in Britain’s waterways. But it isn’t just performance-related pay in the spotlight, said Gill Plimmer in the FT. The financial arrangements of Britain’s ten largest privatised water “monopolies” are under renewed scrutiny following the revelation that they “more than doubled their dividends” to £1.4bn in 2022, despite rising household bills and minimal spending on waste infrastructure. Regulator Ofwat is very concerned both “by the lack of transparency” and the “byzantine structures” of…

For markets, desperation is the new fear John Authers Bloomberg “Fear and greed” have traditionally been the two main instincts that determine the balance of prices in markets. But there’s been a big shift of late, says John Authers. “People are still greedy, because they’re human”, but what’s really driving investment decisions now is “desperation”. Since despair “can overcome fears” that help us to avoid foolish risks, this has serious implications. “If you’re a long way below water, then your interest in patient index-investing, or Buffett-style buy-and-hold stock-picking, will be limited.” The only way to avoid drowning “is to give yourself the best chance of a spectacular return, even if there’s also a real chance that it will go to zero”. The “meme stock” frenzy two years ago was fuelled…

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Robert De Niro, who revealed that he has had his seventh child, at the age of 79. The baby’s mother is believed to be his girlfriend of several years, martial arts instructor Tiffany Chen. The actor’s other children range in age from 11 to 51. Ed Sheeran, after a jury in New York found that the British singer-songwriter had not plagiarised parts of the Marvin Gaye classic Let’s Get It On. Heirs of the song’s co-writer, Ed Townsend, had argued that Sheeran had used chunks of the 1973 hit in his 2014 song Thinking Out Loud. In court, Sheeran pointed out that countless songs used the same chord progression, and warned that he’d leave the music industry if the case went against him. Mark Zuckerberg, who added a new achievement…

Bakhmut, Ukraine Wagner threat: The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, furiously accused Moscow’s Ministry of Defence last week of starving his forces of the ammunition needed to fully capture the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. In a gruesome video, he stood before rows of dead Wagner fighters, blaming their deaths on Russia’s top brass and threatening to pull out of the city. But this week Prigozhin wavered, saying that as the defence ministry had promised him the arms and assigned Gen Sergei Surovikin (the only Russian general who “knows how to fight”, he says) to work alongside him, his troops would likely now stay. Moscow has also stepped up drone attacks and air strikes on cities across Ukraine: unverified reports suggest that in its latest assault on Bakhmut,…

1 Slow Train by Donald Swann and Michael Flanders, performed by Flanders and Swann2 Italian Concerto in F major, BWV 971 by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by George Malcolm3 Why Don’t Women Like Me? by George Formby, Jack Cottrell and Bud Bennett, performed by George Formby4 Adagio from String Quintet in C major D956 by Franz Schubert, performed by Robert Cohen and Amadeus Quartet5 The Elements, written and performed by Tom Lehrer6* London Girls by Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock, performed by Chas & Dave7 Skye Boat Song (Trad.), performed by The Pipes & Drums of Leanisch8 How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place by Johannes Brahms, performed by the Exultate Festival Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Thomas D. Rossin Book: Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes Luxury: fountain pen, paper…

In 2021-2022, the Government spent more than £5bn on HS2: about the same as it spends on the national road network. Critics often argue that the money would be far better used to fund much-needed improvements to existing railways. Rail passengers in the North, especially, have to contend with creaking infrastructure, staff shortages and routine delays or cancellations. Relative to the southeast, the region has been starved of investment, and trains between the North’s biggest cities, such as Leeds and Manchester, are slow and unreliable. So how could the £100bn being swallowed up by HS2 be better used? It could fund upgrades such as electrification to existing rail lines or investment in new signalling technology. Commuter rail services could be improved through upgrades to stations, or new rolling stock. The…

Joe Biden’s cheap border politics David A. Graham The Atlantic In most respects, Joe Biden’s presidency is radically different from that of his predecessor, says David A. Graham. But that’s not true of his handling of illegal immigration. Donald Trump’s response to the problem of unauthorised migrants crossing into the US from Mexico was to make a great show of dispatching troops to the southern border. These deployments had little practical effect. Active-duty members of the military are subject to more restrictions on US soil than the National Guard: they can help with things like construction, but they can’t actually enforce immigration laws. By stationing them at the border for a few weeks, Trump was just using them as “a prop for political purposes”. Biden is now doing the same,…

A new Alzheimer’s drug has been found to slow the progression of the disease by a third, raising hopes that we are entering a new era in which it will become a treatable condition. The drug, donanemab, works by clearing the sticky amyloid-plaque clusters that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, and which are thought to disrupt the ability of brain cells to communicate. That targeting amyloid seems to be effective suggests that, contrary to the fears of some scientists, the focus of the research over the past few decades has been in the right place – even if it turns out that the plaque build-ups are not the only cause of the disease. For the trial, drug firm Eli Lilly recruited 1,736 people aged 60 to 85 with early-stage Alzheimer’s.…

Since her shock US Open victory in 2021, Emma Raducanu has “never looked truly comfortable on the tour”, said Stuart Fraser in The Times. Her progress has been impeded by constant physical niggles; only in flashes has she reproduced the scintillating form that made her the first qualifier in tennis history to win a grand-slam title. Last week, however, the 20-year-old made an announcement that casts new light on her patchy record: it now appears her physical ailments have been more serious than commonly realised. In a handwritten note posted on social media, Raducanu said that in the past ten months, she’d suffered near-constant pain in both wrists, forcing her to miss “weeks of training”. So this month, to resolve the situation, she’s undergoing surgeries on those wrists, along with…

Athletics US Olympian Tori Bowie, a former world sprint champion, has died at the age of 32. Her cause of death has yet to be revealed. Tennis Andy Murray won his first title since 2019, beating American Tommy Paul in the final of the ATP Challenger event in Aix-en-Provence. Formula 1 Max Verstappen extended his lead in the championship by winning the Miami Grand Prix. Football Real Madrid and Man City drew 1-1 in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final. The second leg will be played on Wednesday.…

“There’s been no shortage of stage portrayals of real life VIPs in the past couple of years,” said Clive Davis in The Times. Jack Thorne’s “thoughtful, often wickedly droll” new play, about the relationship between Richard Burton and John Gielgud during rehearsals for a 1964 production of Hamlet on Broadway, is a “distinguished addition” to the genre. “Immaculately directed by Sam Mendes”, it is a “poised study” of how two actors with very different temperaments scrapped and sparred in the runup to opening night. Gielgud, a Shakespearean actor of the old school, who was directing the play, felt his own star was fading; by contrast, the young, arrogant hard-drinking Burton was at the peak of his career, even if it was being overshadowed in the press by his marriage to…

When the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld died in 2019, he “was eulogised as the last of the old guard”, said Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian. This feature-length BBC documentary aims to “demystify the man behind those famous sunglasses” – and it does so with panache. Directed by Michael Waldman, the film gives a “rounded picture” of an individual who could be exceedingly generous to those who were “in”, and ruthless to those who were “out”. Many of Lagerfeld’s inner circle talk about him here publicly for the first time, and there is also archive footage of Lagerfeld reflecting on his own life, from taking over at Chanel (Coco was “a mean bitch; I have nothing against mean bitches”), to his reinvention of himself as a celebrity. The film is “gossipy…

Helen admits to Pat that she feels uncomfortable being at home alone; Natasha tells them about Bridge Farm’s bid for Justin’s Coronation Illumination. After a case of mistaken identity, Jim agrees to represent Greece in the Ambridge Eurovision Show. When the illumination goes to Bridge Farm, Jolene guesses that Kenton had a part in The Bull missing out. Helen and Lee have a child-free evening; she can’t face any intimacy but he reassures her it’s OK. Harrison tells Helen the police have interviewed Rob and she’ll have to go over her statement; Natasha accompanies her and tells Helen she’s worried that Tom is being distant with her. Jolene sorts Tracy out with a wedding dress. Lynda needs a judge for Eurovision – Joy and Mick save the day by managing…

Bread ice cream is a traditional British dish, dating from at least the 17th century, says Amy Newsome. For this version, I suggest a good crusty slice or end of white or wholegrain bread. Clover honey is my favourite to spread on toast, so I’ve suggested it for this recipe – but you could use any good-quality raw honey. Honey on toast ice cream Makes 600ml (1¼ pints) 1 slice of good crusty bread 300ml double cream 4 eggs, separated, yolks lightly beaten 100g clover honey • Preheat the oven to 180°C. Toast the bread in the oven until crispy and browned and then cut into small pieces. • Warm the cream gently in a saucepan, remove from the heat and stir through the toast, reserving a few pieces for…

● Products with active ingredients such as retinoids should be kept in a cool, dark place or fridge, with eye gels, sheet masks and jade rollers. Keep oil-based and clay-based products at room temperature. ● Check best-before dates. Some products will have a number with an M and an open jar symbol: 12M means throw it out 12 months after opening. Generally cleansers will last 12 months, serums with vitamin C three to six, and mascara three months. ● As a rule of thumb, use a pea-sized blob for actives and eye creams, a £1-coin-sized amount for cleansers and moisturisers and a £2-coin-sized amount for SPF. ● Dab a little Vaseline on pulse points before spraying on perfume to stop it drying out and make the scent last longer. ●…

Benjamin Ferencz 1920-2023 Benjamin Ferencz, who has died aged 103, was the “last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials”, said The New York Times. He wasn’t involved in the “first and most important trial” at Nuremberg – that of 24 senior Third Reich officers, including Hermann Göring and Albert Speer; but he helped prosecute scores of less high-profile Nazis in 12 later hearings. His first case, in 1947, was against 22 officers who stood accused of directing the Einsatzgruppen – the roaming SS death squads that had murdered more than a million people in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. Owing to the “staggering” number of victims, it was dubbed the “biggest murder trial in history”. Ferencz was just 27, and had never led a prosecution before. Benjamin Ferencz was born in Transylvania…