Table of contents for 1476 in The Week

What happened Vigils were held in cities across the world last week for Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, following reports of his death in a Russian jail. According to prison officials, the 47-year-old collapsed after going for a walk at the isolated penal colony in Siberia, known as Polar Wolf, where he was serving a lengthy jail term on charges widely seen as trumped-up. He was said to have suffered “sudden death syndrome”, but foreign leaders blamed the Kremlin. “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” declared President Biden. Hours after learning of the death of her husband, Yulia Navalnaya spoke to world leaders at the Munich Security Conference, urging them to step up the pressure on Putin. She later released a video in which she…

Controversy of the week “Antisemitism is often referred to as the world’s oldest hatred,” said The Observer. “Alarmingly, it appears to be flourishing in the UK in 2024.” Last week, the Community Security Trust, a charity that tracks antisemitism in Britain, published its report for 2023. It recorded more than 4,000 incidents, from assaults to the desecration of Jewish sites, to online abuse. There was a huge spike in these following Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October; the last three months of the year saw a surge of 589% on that period in 2022. Unfortunately, there are no signs that anti-Jewish racism is abating. Last week, a recording emerged of Azhar Ali, Labour’s candidate in the Rochdale by-election, telling a meeting that Israel had “allowed” Hamas’s massacre, so its…

The Church of England, with reports that attendance at Sunday services is just 80% what it was in 2019. The figures, compiled by The Sunday Telegraph, suggest that 133,200 people who were regular churchgoers before the pandemic have not returned. Pret A Manger, which cut the price of some of its sandwiches after being accused of profiteering. The price of the egg mayo sandwich is now £2.99, down from £3.40. Late last year, Pret said it’d had to hike prices in response to rising costs. The British Museum, which was flooded by messages on social media demanding the return of a moai statue to Easter Island (aka Rapa Nui). The campaign was launched by an influencer in Chile, who rallied his one million Instagram followers. But it was criticised by…

Brussels Second EC term: The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has confirmed that she plans to seek a second five-year term. The former German defence minister, who has been vocal in her support for Ukraine, said that she’d make strengthening the EU’s defence capabilities and boosting its competitiveness the focus of her second term, and hinted that she might scale back her climate goals. To remain in office she will need to be nominated by EU leaders, and to have that confirmed by the European Parliament after June’s elections. Her grouping, the centre-right EPP, is the largest in the parliament, and is leading in the polls. Paris Far-right boost: The former director of the EU border agency Frontex has joined France’s far-right National Rally (RN), and says that…

1 Blue Rondo à la Turk by Dave Brubeck, performed by The Dave Brubeck Quartet 2 Love Hangover by Marilyn McLeod and Pamela Sawyer, performed by Diana Ross 3 Autobahn by Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider and Emil Schult, performed by Kraftwerk 4 Lava, written and performed by The B-52s 5* Debaser by Black Francis, performed by Pixies 6 Turangalîla-Symphonie, Part 6: Jardin du sommeil d’amour by Olivier Messiaen, performed by Orchestre de l’Opéra Bastille (conducted by Myung-Whun Chung) 7 Tizita, written and performed by Bezawork Asfaw 8 Hymn for the Dormition of the Mother of God by Sir John Tavener, performed by The Sixteen and Harry Christophers Book: The Vivisector by Patrick White Luxury: a seismometer * Choice if allowed only one record…

In 2014, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) introduced what is now an internationally recognised classification system for self-driving cars. All cars fit somewhere on this scale, which ranges from Level 0 to Level 5. Level 0 cars have no automation: driving is performed entirely by a human. Level 1 involves a small amount of driver assistance, and has been in use for decades. A car in this category may have adaptive cruise control, say, or systems to help with braking. Many cars today fit into Level 2: “partial automation”. These can take over steering, acceleration or braking in some situations, such as when your car gets too close to another vehicle, but still require plenty of human input. For most manufacturers, the cutting edge is now Level 3 (“conditional…

There’s no getting rid of Biden William McGurn The Wall Street Journal Could Joe Biden, in response to the growing concerns about his frailty, gracefully bow out of the presidential race? That would delight many Democrats, says William McGurn, but it will only happen if he accepts that he’s not mentally fit to serve – and his current angrily defensive attitude suggests that’s very unlikely to happen, as does his rosy view of his own record. This is the guy who thought that “calling his economic programme Bidenomics was a selling point [and] that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success”, and who insists that the migrant crisis on America’s southern border is the fault of Donald Trump, not his own policies. The Democrats could seek forcibly to replace Biden…

Scientists in South Korea have created rice that contains beef cells, to produce a source of protein that is cheaper than meat and with a smaller carbon footprint. Describing it as a “nutritious and flavourful hybrid food”, the team said the pinkish cultured rice contains 7% more fat than regular grains and 8% more protein; and that gram for gram, its protein involves eight times less carbon emissions than beef. To create it, they coated rice in fish gelatine, to give the animal cells something to latch onto; they then added cow muscle and fat stem cells and left them to culture in a Petri dish. Rice grains are porous, and have organised structures, which means they can act as a scaffold that animal cells can grow on. The scientists…

“Economists spent much of last year discussing the dreaded R-word,” said James Moore in The Independent. Could the stagnant British economy avoid a recession, or couldn’t it? “Now we have the answer: it could not.” The UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2023, following a 0.1% fall in the third, according to the Office for National Statistics. That makes two consecutive quarters of contraction – the standard definition of a recession. Economists had “expected a stumble”, but not one this bad. What’s worse, said Darren Dodd in the FT, is that this headline figure doesn’t tell the full story. Over the whole of 2023, GDP grew a miserly 0.1%, and only because the population was growing so fast. GDP per person – a…

“If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”Anne Lamott, quoted on The Huffington Post “There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher hasn’t said it.”Cicero, quoted in The Jewish Voice “I always used to think that we should have two lifetimes: one to try it out, and the second one to know what’s coming.”Chita Rivera, quoted in People “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop.”William F. Buckley, quoted in The Independent “I am a marvellous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.”Zsa Zsa Gabor, quoted in San Diego Jewish World “All the happiness in the world can’t buy you money.”Toby Keith, quoted in The New York Times “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly…

To The Times The primary duty of all schools is to keep young people safe: the new guidance on banning mobile phone usage in schools fulfils this aim and should be commended. Teaching unions should not be criticising the Government’s move. Instead, they should welcome the policy as a step in the right direction towards a culture in which mobile phones for young people are seen as a risk, not a right. Such a shift makes it more likely that a proper government crackdown on the appalling tactics of social media companies will follow and will be actively supported by parents. It is this logical next step that will help to keep young people as safe outside school as they should be in it. Ben Horan, headmaster, Prior Park College,…

by Paul Theroux Hamish Hamilton 400pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 In his 30th novel, the veteran writer Paul Theroux fictionalises a “relatively unexplored” period of George Orwell’s life, said William Boyd in The New York Times: the five years he spent as a colonial police officer in Burma between 1922 and 1927. Eric Blair (as he then was) was fresh out of Eton, and hadn’t yet decided to become a writer. Theroux presents him as a “somewhat tormented soul”, who is “repelled” by the snobberies and injustices of colonial life. To console himself, he sleeps promiscuously with “local prostitutes and colonial wives”. Inevitably, it’s a work that owes much to speculation, but everything in it “reeks of plausibility” – and it shows that, at the age of 82, Theroux’s…

David Tucker at Gallery 46 The London-based painter David Tucker (b.1973) cared for his dementia-stricken father for three years, helplessly observing his deterioration until his death in 2022. His response was to begin a series of experiments with oil paint, creating heavy impasto likenesses of himself and his father on sequential panes of glass, which are displayed together in rows: the almost sculptural quality of the paint sits uneasily on the transparent surfaces, the multiple panes creating a disorienting, focally confusing effect. For other works, he deconstructed these pictures, scraping his own image off the glass, mixing the scraps of paint with mesh, and impressing his face into them. The resulting pieces are scary things, as if the nightmare creatures in Francis Bacon’s more disturbing paintings had been brought screaming…

Kima 57 Paddington Street, London W1 (07745-205136; kimarestaurant.com) Recently opened in London’s Marylebone, this Greek restaurant feels a long way from those holiday spots where you could “pootle up and get a table for 12 in a taverna and, after endless courses and a few bottles of retsina, still have change from 20 quid”, says William Sitwell in The Daily Telegraph. It specialises in “posh fish”, which “comes at a price”. But what it offers is “some of the finest Greek food I have ever tasted”. The cooking here remains true to the spirit of traditional Greek cuisine, but has been taken up a few notches by a series of “delicate touches”. Sumptuous taramasalata bears little resemblance to the supermarket version. Slices of raw sea bream swimming in olive oil are…

● Learn the rules – the International Ski Federation (FIS) has ten legally binding rules of ski and snowboard conduct. Ski to your ability and adapt your skiing to the conditions. The skier in front has priority. ● To avoid collisions, be aware of your surroundings and stay in control. Always look uphill before setting off. Snowboarders follow a different line to skiers and may be blind to you on the turn. Only stop at the side of a piste, never over the brow of a hill. ● Many leg injuries are caused by poorly adjusted ski bindings. The right setting is a fiddly equation of age, ability, height and weight, so always be honest about these. ● Make sure your skis are properly tuned and edges sharpened by a…

Steve Wright 1954-2024 One of Britain’s most influential disc jockeys, Steve Wright, who has died aged 69, became famous in the 1980s with his pioneering Radio 1 show Steve Wright in the Afternoon, said The Guardian. To the usual formula of chatter linking near back to back music, he added jokes, phone-ins (including from fictional characters such as Mr Angry from Purley), special guests, and a posse of BBC staff who joined in the banter. The format – inspired by shows in the US and by Kenny Everett’s zany broadcasts – was so chaotic it became known as “zoo” radio. The show was hugely popular, attracting eight million listeners, and while other DJs fell out of fashion and favour, Wright was still at the BBC 40 years later. Stephen Richard Wright…

Tate & Lyle has embarked on its first rebranding of Golden Syrup since 1881, says Poppy Koronka in The Times – replacing the famous image of “a dead lion being swarmed by bees” (including the biblical quotation “out of the strong came forth sweetness”) with “a friendly looking lion and a single bee”. The latter is deemed more in keeping with modern tastes. Die-hard syrup fans will be pleased to learn that the new logo will only appear on “squeezy bottles”, and not on the more traditional tins. Even so, experts urge caution about tampering with “a successful brand”, albeit one that, on account of its high sugar content, “may soon be as stigmatised as cigarettes”.…

No firm has benefitted from the boom in artificial intelligence quite like Nvidia, which has “a near monopoly” in specialised AI chips, said The Economist. The excitement has boosted shares by almost 400% since the start of 2023: its market value, at around $1.8trn, is now bigger than that of Google’s parent, Alphabet. No wonder this week’s Q4 results were the subject of such scrutiny. “Is Nvidia invincible?” Probably not in the long term. Big customers such as Amazon and Microsoft are increasingly trying to design their own chips. And other chipmakers – including Intel, AMD and the Californian startup Cerebras – “are also eyeing up Nvidia’s turf”. Still, for the moment, Nvidia remains king. Ahead of the results, analysts expected quarterly revenue to reach $20bn – a $13bn rise…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares EasyJet The Daily Telegraph The budget airline has navigated through the pandemic, cost-of-living crisis and elevated geopolitical risk. Passenger numbers, revenues-per-seat and package holiday demand are rising. The outlook is upbeat. Buy. 553.4p. Novartis The Daily Telegraph Promising new drugs for psoriasis, MS, leukaemia and breast and prostate cancer should cushion the pharma’s patent cliff fall. Margins are rising – and it yields 3.7% with the prospect of further buybacks. Buy. CHF88.44. Relx The Times The provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for customers in science, law and financial services is benefiting from AI development. A “dependable long-term growth story” with rising profits. Buy. £33.14. Synectics The Mail on Sunday This tech firm specialises in top-end security and surveillance systems for casinos,…

What happened Labour overturned huge Tory majorities to win two by-elections last week, further increasing the political pressure on Rishi Sunak. In Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, there was a 28.5% swing from the Tories to Labour; in Kingswood, near Bristol, the swing was 16.4%. With Labour needing a 12.7% swing from the Tories to win a majority at the next election, polling guru John Curtice said the results showed that Starmer is “on course to be our next prime minister”. Especially alarming for the Conservatives was the success of the right-wing Reform UK party, which won 13% of the vote in Wellingborough, its best by-election performance to date. The vote in Wellingborough was triggered by the ousting of former Tory MP Peter Bone over bullying and sexual misconduct. Kingswood’s former Conservative MP,…

The train company Avanti has been ridiculed for offering “menopause bags” to its staff. The bags contain a single tissue, in case “you’re feeling a bit emotional”, a paper clip, “to help you keep it all together”, and a jelly baby, “if you need to bite someone’s head off”. Staff who attended menopause drop-in sessions were also given a pencil with which to “write down things you might forget”. John Lewis has branched out into sex toys. The retailer said it had decided to start selling products from the luxury brand Coco de Mer in response to a rise in searches on its website. Those on offer include a £30 Divine Glow Aqua Lubricant. “Sexual well-being is no longer taboo,” said a spokesperson.…

The Home Office is being sued by a group of overseas students who were wrongly accused of cheating in the English-language tests they had to pass in order to stay in the UK. The 23 students, who had their visas cancelled between 2011 and 2014, are seeking compensation for wrongful arrest and loss of earnings. More than 2,500 people were deported after the Home Office-approved testing company ETS accused them of cheating in exams it had set and marked. Many others were advised to leave the country to avoid arrest. ETS claimed that 58% to 97% of the people who sat the test in 2011-2014 may have cheated. Among those accused was Sajjad Sohag, who was arrested in front of his neighbours in 2014. He spent 70 days in detention,…

Central Kootenay, Canada Zombie deer disease: Scientists in British Columbia have issued warnings of a chronic wasting condition, dubbed “zombie deer disease”, that is devastating deer, moose and elk populations across Canada. The fatal disease is caused by misfolded proteins known as prions that infect the brain and nervous system, causing animals to drool, grow lethargic and die. It’s unclear if it is transmissible to humans, but prion diseases have crossed the species barrier before, notably with mad cow disease. The possibility that humans might catch this one by eating infected venison has not been ruled out. Washington DC Ukraine bill hold-up: The fate of President Biden’s $61bn aid package for Ukraine hung in the balance this week, with Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker, refusing to confirm whether or not…

“Hooray, I knew we were good at something. German linguists have found that the English language uniquely excels in the number of words we have for being wellied, spannered, mortalled and rat-arsed. Almost any noun can be made into a ‘drunkonym’ by adding -ed at the end; Britain has some 546 such terms. Glancing down the academics’ list I was pleased to see old favourites, such as ‘muntered’, ‘twatted’, ‘blathered’ and ‘shitfaced’, recorded for posterity. Recently, I heard a young person say: ‘I have a terrible hangover. I got completely bell-ended.’ I regret to say that this excellent addition was not listed. So please, German academics, make that 547.” Carol Midgley in The Times…

The true cost of your home deliveries Nesrine Malik The Guardian “Be your own boss.” That’s the familiar line in adverts for gig economy jobs, says Nesrine Malik. Work as a “delivery app rider” and enjoy autonomy and flexibility. In reality, of course, it’s nothing like that. Pay is tied to the number of deliveries you make: even the most reckless rider can’t do more than three in an hour. So, to scrape a living, riders have to be slaves to the algorithm, working every hour at a relentless pace. An 11-hour shift gets you little more than £100. And there’s no pension or parental leave, no sick or holiday pay. If the bike needs fixing, if food deliveries are stolen off the back – a regular occurrence – that’s…

A breakthrough in nuclear fusion A reactor in Oxfordshire has produced a record-breaking amount of energy from nuclear fusion, bringing the dream of a near-limitless supply of clean power a step closer. The Joint European Torus (Jet) created a “monumental” 69 megajoules of energy over five seconds, using just 0.2mg of fuel, surpassing the previous record by ten megajoules. Nuclear fusion, in which two light atomic nuclei slam together to form a heavier one, releasing a massive amount of energy in the process, is what powers the Sun and other stars. Scaled up, it could produce an abundance of electricity without releasing any greenhouse gases. But such power plants are still some way off. The energy produced (by heating deuterium and tritium – both isotopes of hydrogen – to 150…

Asked by The Stage to describe the worst moment she’d ever had on stage, Jessica Brown Findlay recalled appearing in a production of Uncle Vanya in 2016. “For the first minute, we were all on stage but no one was meant to speak,” she said. “In one performance, a man in maroon cords three rows back just stood up and loudly said, ‘No, not for me,’ – and left.” The former model and “It girl’ Lady Victoria Hervey is so convinced that the notorious photograph of Prince Andrew at Ghislaine Maxwell’s house has been doctored, she’s had it printed onto a T-shirt with the word “FAKED” emblazoned across it. Hervey, who dated Andrew in the 1990s, claims that the photo originally showed Jeffrey Epstein with his arm around Virginia Giuffre’s…

England went into the third Test in India with the five-match series poised 1-1, knowing that a win would leave them “on the brink of a historic series triumph”, said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. Yet rather than challenging India – who are missing several key players, and have rarely looked so vulnerable at home – Ben Stokes’s men succumbed to one of the heaviest defeats in living memory. India needed only four days to beat them by a “whopping 434 runs”: you have to go back to Australia’s 562-run victory in a timeless Test in 1934 to “find a thumping as statistically awful as this for England”. This was England’s first “genuine pummelling” of the Bazball era, said Ali Martin in The Guardian. Stokes’s team simply weren’t in…

Cycling Chris Hoy, the six-time Olympic champion, has revealed that he has cancer. Football Roy Hodgson, 76, has stepped down as Crystal Palace’s manager, days after requiring medical treatment for an unspecified illness. He has been replaced by Oliver Glasner. Rugby union England scrum-half Alex Mitchell has been ruled out of Saturday’s Six Nations clash against Scotland with a knee injury. Swimming GB’s Freya Colbert won gold in the 400m individual medley at the world championships in Qatar.…

Running time: 1hr 50mins Standing ovations are “ten-a-penny” in the theatre these days, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. “But I’ve never seen one as swift or unanimous as that which greeted Sarah Snook” at the end of this show. And for once, it “seemed fully justified”. In Kip Williams’s stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel, the Australian actress (one of the stars of TV’s Succession) inhabits all 26 characters. Her every move is filmed by an onstage team of camera operators, and we see her in dizzying close-up on an array of screens. She also interacts live with pre-recorded screen versions of herself – as the sinister Lord Henry Wotton, the besotted artist Basil Hallward, the hapless actress Sibyl Vane and so on. It could all be too…

A Russian dissident artist claims to have sealed a collection of works by Rembrandt, Picasso, Sarah Lucas and others in a 29 tonne safe – and says they’ll be destroyed if the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (pictured) dies in jail. Andrei Molodkin, who lives in France, says the art has a combined value of $40m. However, he has not specified which works they are. Some were donated by their artists; the Picasso belongs to the owner of a gallery in Milan that is backing the project. Titled Dead Man’s Switch, the work is a protest against the erosion of freedom of speech and expression. Its aim, says Molodkin, is to highlight the anomaly that it is more taboo to destroy art than to “destroy the life of a person”. Apparently,…

With Kenton out of action, David volunteers at The Bull, but gets Lilian’s back up. Kenton is worried about Jolene. Alice confides in Fallon about Harry’s Mum; Fallon suggests a double-date with her and Harrison. When a Valentine arrives for Alastair, he asks Denise if she sent it, but it’s from a dating app he signed up to years ago; Paul urges him to get back on it. Harry puts his foot in it with Harrison and Fallon, asking about kids – Harrison storms off but later apologises. Alastair tells Denise he’s embarrassed about the Valentine mix-up. When Paul announces his grandma is very sick, Denise insists he go to St Lucia to see her; she and Alastair will cover for him at work. Ruth and Pip struggle at Brookfield…

This is a delicious soup that is marvellously useful owing to the simplicity of its ingredients, says Rosie Sykes. The chickpeas are tinned and you don’t even really need the leeks: you could just use more onion instead. It’s vegan, but it doesn’t have to be: chopped cured meat or salted fish can be added to the garlic bread purée, and a grating of parmesan or pecorino on top would also be great. Serves 4 3 tbsp olive oil, and a splash more 1 onion, halved and finely sliced 2 small leeks, trimmed as little as possible and sliced using all the green, then washed well 5 garlic cloves, 4 crushed or finely grated, 1 cut into quarters lengthways 400g frozen spinach, defrosted in a sieve 400g tin chickpeas, drained,…

The Jolly Sportsman, East Sussex is a foodie pub set in a quiet hamlet. It has four comfortable guest bedrooms, and dogs are welcome (doubles from £140 b&b; thejollysportsman.com). There are 11 chic rooms at The Jack Russell Inn, Hampshire, on the 4,000-acre Faccombe Estate. The North Wessex Downs and Highclere Castle are close by (doubles from £140 b&b; thejackrussellinn.com). For a truly rural retreat, try one of the 16 rooms at The West Arms, North Wales, hidden away in the Ceiriog Valley, with fine views and an award-winning restaurant (doubles from £165 b&b; thewestarms.com). Enjoy spectacular sunsets at The Creggans Inn, Argyll, on the shores of Loch Fyne. It has a bistro serving Scottish classics (doubles from £139 b&b; creggans-inn.co.uk). The Timble Inn, West Yorkshire, in the Washburn Valley, has nine cosy rooms and…

South Lodge Horsham, West Sussex This Victorian country house hotel hit the news last year when sous chef Tom Hamblet won MasterChef: The Professionals. He has since taken residency as head chef at one of its restaurants, Camellia, says Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph, where he will be in charge throughout March. His menus have just the right amount of “zany panache”, and the hotel also has another excellent, Michelin-starred restaurant, The Pass. The 88 rooms are spacious, with “splashy” wallpaper and “sumptuous” bathrooms, and there’s an “immaculate” spa, and extensive grounds with views of the South Downs. Doubles from £415 b&b; exclusive.co.uk.…

How to fix Europe’s economy Chris Giles Financial Times Europeans have long looked across the Atlantic “with a mixture of horror and awe”, says Chris Giles. While they wouldn’t accept the USA’s “health and social inequalities”, they wish they could be as rich. The comparison is now particularly stark. “As Americans revel in unexpected economic strength”, France has been forced to cut back on public spending and Germany is fretting about recession. Until the “turning point” of 2008, the bloc (excluding the UK) had the larger economy; it’s now about 10% smaller than America’s. Yet in reality, the EU’s performance has been better than that figure suggests. Despite enjoying shorter working hours and longer holidays, its GDP growth per person of working age is broadly similar to America’s; the difference…

At the turn of the 20th century, the Swiss were plagued by strange, interlinked medical conditions. They existed elsewhere to a degree, but in Switzerland were endemic in more than 80% of the country. It was a curse that had a mark: the goitre, a bulge of flesh protruding from the front of the neck, sometimes so large that it weighed on the windpipe, giving bearers a wheeze. It was often disguised by collars and high necklines, but its true extent is laid bare by conscription data. In 1921, nearly 30% of 19-year-old Swiss conscripts had a goitre. For every man with a goitre, three women suffered from the condition. Children were the most vulnerable of all: in 1921, in the city of Bern, 94% of schoolchildren had some swelling…

Christopher Nolan, after his film Oppenheimer scooped seven awards at the Baftas, including best film, best director and best actor. David Tennant was widely praised for his hosting of the ceremony, wearing a kilt and accompanied by a dog, but the biggest cheer of the evening went to Michael J. Fox, who received a standing ovation when he came on stage to present an award. Carmen Smith, 27, who is due to become the youngest member of the House of Lords. The Plaid Cymru activist was nominated by her party, and will be its only representative in the upper house.…

46% of parents in England with a child under five say that, in order to pay for childcare, they have had to either take out some form of loan or dig into their savings – up from 35% last year. Pregnant Then Screwed/The Independent Asked if the Government should prioritise funding public services or giving people a tax cut, 57% of adults in Great Britain support funding public services. 27% say they would prefer tax cuts. YouGov 49% of adults in Northern Ireland would vote to remain a part of the United Kingdom if a referendum on the issue were held now. 39% say they would opt for Irish reunification. LucidTalk/Belfast Telegraph…

The high cost of stardom Sharon Stone had been plugging away in Hollywood for 12 years, but became an overnight star with 1992’s Basic Instinct, says Mattie Kahn in InStyle – and she wasn’t prepared for what that entailed. Fans tried to mount her car as she drove it; when she went to restaurants, crowds gathered outside and pounded on the windows. On a flight, a passenger got so aggressive, the pilot had to turn the plane around. Stone was paid $500,000 for the film; co-star Michael Douglas is reported to have got $14m. And she found she needed the money, to pay for all sorts of things she’d not needed before – security, publicists, managers, a more secluded house. In the years after, she could tell that people thought…

A transatlantic flight was forced to turn back last week after maggots started raining down on passengers from the overhead lockers. Philip Schotte, who was on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, told reporters that he’d seen a woman across the aisle from him having to “fight off” the larvae, which had escaped from a bag containing a rotting fish. “She was freaking out,” he recalled. “I was trying to process it.” The owner of the bag soon identified himself, although it remains unclear why he had chosen to travel with the fish. A respected science journal has apologised for publishing a paper that included an AI-generated diagram of a rat, depicted with four testicles and a huge penis. The creature, which appeared in the Frontiers in Cell and Developmental…

MYANMAR Faith in youth won’t save the generals The Irrawaddy (Chiang Mai) By forcing young people to join the army, Myanmar’s ruling generals are “digging their own graves”, says The Irrawaddy. A law permitting the regime to call up young Burmese to the military has been on the books for 65 years but never used. Last week that changed. The junta says it will draft 60,000 young people every year to help suppress the pro-democracy resistance movement, a movement that emerged after the army toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in 2021. The resort to conscription is a clear sign that the generals are losing ground to the rebels, who now control half the country and have killed or captured thousands of troops loyal to the regime. But conscription…

If you hear Sadiq Khan intone that “this is a hugely exciting moment”, you can be sure that the London Mayor has just announced some “stupid” thing that will annoy most of the capital’s residents and many of the rest of us too, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. And so it was last week, when Khan unveiled his £6.3m rebranding of the Overground network. Its six train lines appear in orange on the Underground map, but now they’ll get their own colours and their own names – a virtue-signalling “hotchpotch” including Suffragette (after the sometimes violent campaign led by women in east London), Windrush (for a line serving areas with large Afro-Caribbean populations) and Mildmay (after a hospital where a lot of Aids patients were treated 35 years…

Well, that was a waste of time, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Last week, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan unveiled new guidelines on “banning” mobile phones from classrooms across England. It’s an issue of interest to parents everywhere, but “I don’t think a grateful nation will be overwhelming [Keegan] with messages of thanks for her efforts”. For a start, this is just guidance, so schools are under no obligation to do anything about it. It’s also hopelessly vague. Keegan presented schools with four models of prohibition – ranging from a straightforward ban on phones on school premises to allowing pupils to carry them on the condition that they’re “never used, seen or heard”. They’re all policies that schools, with “some years of direct experience in the matter, might just have…

When Manchester United agreed to pay Atalanta a fee of up to £72m for the young Danish striker Rasmus Højlund last summer, some commentators felt the sum was “excessive”, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph. Although the then 20-year-old Dane was clearly very talented, he hadn’t scored more than ten goals in 34 appearances for the Italian club – an impressive but hardly earth-shattering record. Would Erik ten Hag, United’s manager, come to regret spending so much on a relatively untested player? At first, it seemed he would, said Ed Aarons in The Guardian. Højlund struggled to settle in at Old Trafford, and didn’t score once in his first 14 Premier League appearances (though he managed five goals in the Champions League). Since breaking his league duck against Aston…

The shock of the old To The Guardian Julian Spalding argues that the National Gallery should scrap its 1900 cut-off date. But it is usual that there is a big city gallery that displays older art, while other galleries show more recent work. Spalding suggests that the cut-off date implies that painting ended in 1900. No one thinks that, but everyone knows something radical happened to painting around then, and the advent of modernism makes 20th and 21st century painting a distinct body of work. The entire point of the National Gallery – or the Rijksmuseum, the Louvre, the Prado or the Alte Pinakothek – is that old paintings are always new: a Rembrandt painting is both the ancestor and the contemporary of a David Hockney. If I want to…

by Katalin Karikó Bodley Head 336pp £22 The Week Bookshop £17.99 “The 646 people who have won Nobel science prizes include many who faced formidable obstacles,” said Clive Cookson in the FT. “But few have overcome adversity like Katalin Karikó.” In 2023, the biochemist co-won the Nobel award for medicine, for her work developing mRNA vaccines. It helped save the lives of millions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and she was feted around the world. Yet this memoir begins on the plains of central Hungary, in the 1950s, where her family lived “in a single room heated by a sawdust stove”. Her father had lost his job as a butcher for agitating against the Communist regime, and become a day labourer. Karikó nonetheless thrived at school (as the child of a…

Running time: 2hrs 45mins Today’s theatregoers may be unaware that Dodie Smith, the much-loved author of I Capture the Castle and The Hundred and One Dalmatians, was once a “West End sensation”, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph. When Dear Octopus premiered in 1938, starring John Gielgud, it was the playwright’s sixth hit in seven years. Unlike Smith’s novels, her plays fell from favour: Dear Octopus hasn’t been revived since 1988 (at Windsor). But this terrific production at the National makes a “persuasive case” for their restoration to the repertoire. A sprawling family reunion saga, the play is filled with “zingers” but has undertones of “Chekhovian melancholy”. Beautifully staged by director Emily Burns, it makes for “poignant, exquisitely performed theatre”. This “glorious” production is a “visual and emotional feast”,…

To Noto by Duncan Fallowell, 1989 (available used). The magical Fallowell’s lively intelligence is perfectly suited to the travelogue format – the random sights and sounds; the galleries, opera houses, eccentric expats littering his path, as he journeys to Sicily. The sunburnt high spirits are mixed with much melancholy, as a lot of what he searches for has been destroyed. According to Mark by Penelope Lively, 1984 (Penguin £9.99). Woven amongst a love story is a brilliant disquisition on the awfulness of conventional biography. A jobbing academic falls for the descendant of the long-dead author he is researching – and for the first time in his life feels passion. The lesson learnt: nothing is quite what it seems. The Richard Burton Diaries edited by Chris Williams, 2012 (Yale University Press…

Programmes Prisoner Acclaimed Danish drama starring The Killing’s Sofie Gråbøl as one of four prison guards tasked with investigating drug trafficking, and uncovering secrets within and beyond the prison’s walls. Sat 24 Feb, BBC4 21:00 and 22:00 (60mins each). Inside Classical: Dvorák’s New World Symphony The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and violinist Jennifer Pike perform Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”, and Bruch’s First Violin Concerto. Sun 25 Feb, BBC4 20:00 (70mins). The British Airways Killer Two-part documentary about the murder of Joanna Simpson by her husband, a BA pilot, in 2010, and the investigation that followed. Mon 26 and Thur 29 Feb, ITV1 21:00 (60mins each). Darren McGarvey: The State We’re In The rapper and activist travels around the country to investigate the crisis in the criminal justice…

The largest Land Rover Defender is now available with a five-litre supercharged V8 engine. “An exercise in excess,” said Evo, it is not only the biggest car in the Defender line-up, it’s also “the biggest character”. With 493bhp, it can do 0-62mph in 5.7 seconds, which is quick for a car that weighs 2,670kg and is more than 5.3 metres long. It rides well, considering it’s equipped with “whopping” 22-inch wheels, and can navigate very challenging terrain off-road. Brash, with “plenty of brawn”, the 130 V8 does feel “excessive” said Auto Express, and yet “there’s something about a Defender you can’t help but love”. The V8 powertrain is “alarmingly thirsty”: fuel economy is below 20mpg even in test conditions, and emissions are 325g/km. Despite the bulk, this is still “a…

Alexei Navalny 1976-2024 Alexei Navalny was Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, and a long-term thorn in the side of the Putin regime, said The Guardian. Repeated arrests, harassment and assaults did not deter him from his investigations into high-level corruption, which he published in blogs, on X/Twitter and on YouTube, to bypass the Kremlin’s grip on the mainstream media. His comment, that Putin’s United Russia was a “party of crooks and thieves”, became a “powerful mantra” on social media, and he galvanised a major opposition movement – rallying candidates to stand against United Russia in local elections all over the country. In 2013, he stood himself in a mayoral contest in Moscow. He came second with 27% of the vote – and claimed that it had been rigged to deny…

Henry Staunton Just as ministers thought the public outcry over the treatment of hundreds of sub-postmasters was dying down, a new row is threatening to engulf the Government, says Kate Devlin in The Independent. In one corner, the Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch; in the other, Henry Staunton – the Post Office chair she sacked last month. The extraordinary war of words began last weekend when Staunton gave an explosive interview to The Sunday Times. He claimed that Badenoch sacked him with the words: “Well, someone’s got to take the rap for this.” He also said that a senior civil servant had told him to delay paying compensation to victims of the Horizon IT scandal, so that the Conservatives could “limp into” the general election without paying the bill. Badenoch dismissed…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1402 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 4 March. Send it to The Week Crossword 1402, 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 Awesome caddis flies could be a problem for farmers (3,3,7) 8 Scheme to go through river exit (7) 9 Excellent depth of colour in solvent (7) 11 Erect keyboard instrument (7) 12 Lots of fine paper in Time magazines (7) 13 Ship’s bin-bag? (5) 14 First and…