Índice para 1578 em The Week

Controversy of the week A contest to savour A by-election is due at the end of this month, which “could have profound consequences for the future of both the Labour Party and British politics”, said John Harris in The Guardian. It’s being held in the Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton, an area once regarded by one and all as a Labour stronghold. And had Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, been allowed to stand, the party would have enjoyed pretty decent odds of retaining the seat. But now that Keir Starmer and his allies have blocked Burnham from taking part, there’s no certainty what might happen. Labour might still succeed in keeping the seat – it has “a formidable get-out-the-vote machine, and droves of activists” – but it’s…

Visitors to Rome, who must now pay two euros to see the Trevi Fountain, in the latest effort to reduce the impact of overtourism in the city. The fountain, in which Anita Ekberg danced in La Dolce Vita, attracts up to 70,000 visitors a day. Experience elsewhere suggests that the fee will not bring that number down, but officials say that, with the revenue, they’ll be better able to control the crowds and protect the 18th century landmark. Rover and Fido, with a poll showing that old-school dog names are out of favour. Poppy and Luna and Willow top today’s lists for dogs. The cat list is also topped by Poppy and Luna, as Tabby, Whiskers and Marmalade have fallen down the rankings. The “Waspi women”, after ministers once again…

51% of voters think Labour should replace Keir Starmer as leader. The PM’s net satisfaction score is-49, a record low. Among those who want a change of leader, 24% would like to see Andy Burnham as PM; 23% answered “none of the above” when presented with 12 possible candidates. BMG Research/The i Paper 68% of Britons think that tuition fees of £9,000 a year are too high; 44% think the Government should write off some or all student debt. YouGov 22% of Tory voters at the last election have a more positive view of Reform UK since former Conservative MPs such as Robert Jenrick defected to the party; 13% say it made them think less of Nigel Farage’s party. YouGov/The Times…

Sajid Javid on his childhood Sajid Javid was a millionaire by the time most of us heard of him, but the ex-Tory minister wasn’t born into privilege. His parents were immigrants from Pakistan, and their home was a cramped flat above their shop in Bristol, says Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday Times. Javid shared a bed in his parents’ room with one of his brothers; the other three boys slept on mattresses in his father’s office. He was embarrassed by their living conditions, but aged 11, he plucked up the courage to invite a friend home. His mother bought fish fingers and chips to serve their non-Pakistani guest, and the visit seemed to go well. But a day or two later, he heard the boy say that “my house was…

A French hospital was evacuated last weekend, after a man turned up there with an unexploded First World War artillery shell stuck in his rectum. The man, 24, went to Rangueil Hospital in Toulouse complaining of severe pain, but without offering details. Only when he underwent surgery did doctors discover the 8-inch shell, dating to 1918, inside him – causing staff to call a bomb disposal team. Another French hospital was evacuated in 2022, when an 88-year-old man came in with a similar issue. A 77-year-old curator at Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art has become a hit on social media, owing to her Gen-Z style descriptions of the museum’s works. In her latest video, Alison Luchs describes a 16th century urn, calling the stone it’s made of “Goated” (the…

SPAIN A decent way to treat the migrant worker El País (Madrid) All credit to our minority socialist government, says El País. It has decided to legalise the status of Spain’s undocumented migrants, and in doing so it’s putting an end to the marginalisation and exploitation of hundreds of thousands of people. Colombians, Peruvians and Hondurans are the main nationalities affected, but all undocumented foreigners who can show they’ve lived in Spain for at least five months will be included, provided they’ve no criminal record. This was an urgently needed move – government can’t function when a huge pool of people lack rights, and the last regularisation was back in 2005. It also has wide support: the employers’ associations, the bishops, the unions and the NGOs have all expressed their…

Some of the most important evidence available to palaeontologists comes not from fossilised dinosaur bones, but from their fossilised footprints. As one animal could leave multiple tracks, thousands of these prints have been found in sedimentary rock all over the world, giving vital glimpses of the animals’ habits and geographical spread. But accurately identifying the species that made them is notoriously difficult and time-consuming. Not only did many species have similar feet, the type of sand or mud they walked through, their gait, and the passage of time may all have affected the shape of the print left behind. Now, however, there is an AI-powered app to help with that. Developed by German data scientist Dr Gregor Hartmann, in conjunction with palaeontologists in the UK, the app was trained on…

Margate has an unlikely new cheerleader. Madonna travelled to the south coast last week to see her friend Tracey Emin. The Queen of Pop said she’d been to the “seaside town in England” a few times before, and been struck by the “commitment and passion” of its artists (as well as the quality of the food at a local Italian). “The whole town seems to be inhabited and energised by creativity,” she wrote on Instagram. “This is my idea of heaven. Whenever I go there, I feel like I’ve entered a dream.” Brooklyn Peltz Beckham’s American in-laws are far richer than his own parents – and the writer and podcaster Marina Hyde has claimed that his wife Nicola Peltz may be receiving a very generous sum in pocket money from…

“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”H.L. Mencken, quoted on Goodreads “Human beings are like rivers. We will always find a way to go downhill.”Jeremy Clarkson in The Sunday Times “Victory awaits those who have everything in order – people call that luck.”Roald Amundsen, quoted on Inc. “It’s good to do uncomfortable things. It’s weight training for life.”Anne Lamott, quoted in Southern Living “Success is never so interesting as struggle. Not even to the successful.”Willa Cather, quoted in The New Republic “The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.”G.K. Chesterton, quoted on The Knowledge “Patience is strength itself.”Simone Weil, quoted in the Los Angeles Review of Books “To a…

Football Michael Carrick maintained his 100% record as Manchester United’s interim head coach with a 3-2 victory over Fulham. Benjamin Šeško scored the winner in the 94th minute. Arsenal lead the Premier League by six points after beating Leeds United 4-0. Golf Patrick Reed has joined former PGA champion Brooks Koepka in quitting the rebel LIV tour. Both will return to the PGA Tour. Cricket In their final T20 World Cup warm-up game, Australia suffered their worst-ever defeat in the format, losing to Pakistan by 111 runs.…

During the first Trump administration, when liberal commentators warned that America was “descending into a fascist police state and the president was probably about to start bombing Canada”, you could believe that they were suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, said James Marriott in The Times. Today, you feel the condition should be renamed as “Accurate Perception of Reality Syndrome”. As such, the new series of Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy in America could scarcely be more timely; nor its first episode – about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) – more topical. We hear from George Retes, a US military veteran who was driving to work when he was dragged from his car by ICE agents and held for three days with “no phone call, no lawyer, no shower, no nothing”.…

“Fresh and bright” reds are in fashion once again, says Victoria Moore in The Daily Telegraph – which is good news for beaujolais. Once associated in British eyes primarily with “beaujolais nouveau” – a phenomenon that thankfully no longer inspires so much “hoopla” – the region now produces an array of “seriously good”, “lighter medium-bodied wines”, typically in the £15 to £28 spectrum. I love this style of red chilled, in the depths of winter, poured with a warming casserole such as coq au vin. “Particularly good” is Elisa Guerin La Vigne de Mon Père 2023 Moulin-à-Vent (£18; The Wine Society): a wine of great virtuosity, it has “subtle notes of rose amid the usual redcurrants”. Also recommended is Jean-Marc Burgaud Morgon Côte du Py 2023 (£25; Abingdon Fine Wine)…

Learn how to plan and create abstract artwork in Andalusia on this 7-night trip, with five days of painting en plein air and in the studio with a tutor. Meals and local excursions are included, and all abilities are welcome (from €1,950, 19-26 May; granadaculturalholidays.com). The bestselling author Kate Mosse co-hosts workshops with her writer husband Greg at this creative writing retreat in Crete, where guests can stay in little cottages surrounding a pool (from £1,575 per couple, 11-18 Aug; simpsontravel.com). If you can swim 500m in a pool and want to make the transition to open water, why not try a swim camp in Cyprus? Swims start in the shallow waters of the bay, with technical coaching and video analysis too (from £1,350 for 5 nights in June; swimtrek.com).…

Zannier Bãi San Hô  Dak Lak, Vietnam With elegant architecture inspired by the local vernacular, this resort is set beside an “empty” milelong beach in a wonderfully remote corner of central Vietnam, says Rebecca Misner in Condé Nast Traveller. Surrounded by “verdant” hills and rice paddies, the 73 villas feature “earthy” tones and natural materials – wood, rattan, jute and bedding of “nubby” silk. The three restaurants are “excellent”, with breakfasts (including bánh xèo, or pancakes with shrimp, egg, herbs and fish sauce) that are “especially good”. And there’s lots to do, including spa treatments, tennis and visits to local villages. Doubles from £415; zannierhotels.com.…

Eliminating a feudal housing arrangement… Lex  Financial Times “An Englishman’s home may well be his castle”, but the leasehold system – which affects about a fifth of homes, including the majority of flats in England and Wales – is “a crack in the edifice”, says Lex. So a government plan to tackle this “feudal-era arrangement”, in which leaseholders own a property for a set term but the underlying land belongs to a freeholder, is more than welcome. Yes, the PM’s decision to cap ground rent at £250 a year will “create losers”, the Church of England and fund manager M&G among them, but that’s no defence for this anachronistic system. In fact, the reform doesn’t go far enough. It also needs to tackle so-called “fleeceholds”, which allow freeholders and their…

This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 8 Time to copy video (4)  9 Something for the summer term, struggling with Tai Chi (10) 10 Dad ain’t changing coat due to age? (6) 11 Minute, like the three blind mice? (8) 12 Feature of sand, unending (4)  13 What comes from Parma that’s tough? (4,6) 17 Somewhat more than half tipsy? That’s perhaps arguable (4) 18 Pace set by the vacuous parliamentarian? Nul (5) 19 Following mineral you’ll get a warning (4) 20 Get subordinate to rise (10) 22 Cruise giving son bother (4)  23 Driver, e.g., would be around in one of these (4,4) 27 Complains having nothing to do with gross entrails (6)  28 British fool rings those blowing their…

A film crew making a low-budget horror in Wales had to relocate the shoot to North Yorkshire, so that its actors could smoke real cigarettes. In Wales, smoking is banned on film sets, but in England it’s permitted provided the actor is smoking for the role. The team making the film, Rabbit Trap, said that using CGI to make fake cigarettes look real would have been too expensive. A new parenting trend is sweeping through social media: “Fafo”, short for “f**k around and find out”. In one viral video, a mother explains that she chucked her daughter’s iPad out of the car window, to punish her for acting up. In another, a stroppy child declares he’s leaving home. His mother says “see ya” and closes the front door behind him.…

The Government has been accused of paying hospitals to go through NHS waiting lists, removing patients who have died, or who no longer need or want treatment, so it can claim that its efforts to clear the backlog are working. According to The Times, NHS England has paid £3m a month to hospital trusts for this “validation” work. In November, the number of people on waiting lists fell by 86,000 – a figure The Times says is mainly due to an 82,000 jump that month in the number of people removed by validation processes. The Government insists that 85% of waiting-list cuts are down to patients receiving care.…

Paris X raid: French authorities raided the social media firm X/Twitter’s Paris office this week, as part of a probe into alleged cybercrimes. Prosecutors said they were looking into whether the company had broken the law by, among other things, sharing sexual deepfakes and Holocaustdenial content produced by Grok, X’s AI chatbot. They also confirmed that they had summoned Elon Musk, X’s owner, and Linda Yaccarino (above), its former CEO, to interviews in April. X has previously described the French investigation, which began last year, as “politically motivated”. Days before the raid, the EU launched a similar inquiry into X. Paris  ICE contractor sale: A French IT giant has announced that it is putting up for sale a US-based subsidiary that recently negotiated a multimillion-dollar contract with US Immigration and…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured the scientist Professor Michele Dougherty 1 Nessun Dorma by Puccini, performed by Luciano Pavarotti and the LPO (cond. Zubin Mehta) 2* Cello Concerto in E minor by Elgar, performed by Jacqueline du Pré and the LSO (cond. John Barbirolli) 3 Violin Concerto in D major by Tchaikovsky, performed by Frank Peter Zimmermann and the Berliner Philharmoniker (cond. Lorin Maazel) 4 We Three Kings of Orient Are by John Henry Hopkins Jr, performed by the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers 5 Dancing Queen by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson, performed by ABBA 6 Dance with My Father by Luther Vandross and Richard Marx, performed by Luther Vandross 7 Panis Angelicus by César Franck, performed by Kiri Te Kanawa and the ECO (cond. Barry Rose) 8 Pie Jesu by…

Fed up with a dictator who had overturned an unfavourable election result, and who had been indicted in the US for drug trafficking, the president ordered a military build-up – and sent in troops to grab the tyrant. The target wasn’t Maduro but General Manuel Noriega of Panama, who was toppled by President George H.W. Bush in 1989. Noriega had been a US ally, and a CIA informant. But after he’d had opponents killed, and his ties to drug cartels had been exposed, Bush demanded he step down. When Noriega refused, and an off-duty US marine was killed in Panama, Bush invaded on 20 December 1989, deploying 27,000 troops. Noriega fled to the Vatican embassy where, besieged and blasted with loud rock music, he surrendered on 3 January. He was…

The Clintons should be held in contempt Michelle Cottle The New York Times Given how “hyper-polarised” US politics is these days, says Michelle Cottle, it came as a shock last month when a rogue band of Democrats agreed to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress. The charges stemmed from the Clintons’ initial refusal to testify in person before the House Oversight Committee in its investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (this week they agreed to do so). Nine of the panel’s 21 Democrats joined Republicans to pass the contempt measure. The Clintons’ reluctance to appear before the panel was understandable. The motive of the Republican chairman, James Comer, in issuing the subpoenas was clearly to embarrass them and deflect attention from Donald Trump’s links to…

The UK has been stripped of its measles-free status, after a surge in cases. The World Health Organisation had judged the country to have eliminated measles between 2021 and 2023, owing to there being no more sustained transmission of the virus. However, measles has since become re-established, with 3,681 cases in 2024. A rise in deaths also contributed to the rethink, said Denis Campbell in The Guardian. There were 20 deaths from measles in the six years from 2019, the same number as in the preceding 19 years. Meanwhile, uptake of the MMR vaccine has fallen. Just 83.7% of five-year-olds were fully vaccinated against measles in 2024/25, down from 88.2% about a decade earlier, and well below the 95% required for herd immunity. Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan have…

“History hung thickly in the air” at the Australian Open last Sunday, said Jack Snape in The Guardian. On one side of the net in the men’s final was 22-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, who was vying to become the youngest man to win all four grand slams – a record held by Don Budge since 1938. Across from him was Novak Djokovic, who had a shot at becoming, at 38, the oldest grand slam champion of the open era, and the first player in history to secure 25 grand slam singles titles. Both had been involved in spectacular semi-finals – Alcaraz prevailing over Alexander Zverev, Djokovic beating Jannik Sinner. By contrast, this match “was a little slow to catch light”, said Simon Briggs in The Daily Telegraph. The first two sets…

Glyph by Ali Smith Hamish Hamilton 288pp £20 The Week Bookshop £17.99 Ali Smith is a “cult figure” who is also “widely popular”, said John Self in The Times. That may be because, while her novels are experimental, they’re also “comforting”: they engage with the here and now, and are “made from human connections”. Smith’s latest novel, Glyph – a companion to last year’s Gliff – is narrated by two sisters, Patch and Petra, who were once close but are now estranged. The “hard to summarise” plot jumps between past and present, and as in Gliff, it involves a horse – in this case a “blinded war horse” rescued by the sisters’ great-grandfather during the First World War. As ever with Smith, the “primary power” of this novel comes from…

Grayson Perry at Piano Nobile It’s easy to knock Grayson Perry, and a lot of people do. The art world hates it when its members become successful in other disciplines, and since winning the Turner Prize in 2003, Perry (b.1960) has moonlighted in so many fields – broadcasting, writing, singing, even architecture – that it’s a wonder he has found the time to make any actual art. This shouldn’t, however, detract from his particular and often wildly weird graphic sensibility. This show – really more of a display – brings together a number of older Perry works, ranging from pastiches of medieval maps emblazoned with his personal iconography to a berserk woodcut depicting the artist in full-on Margaret Thatcher drag. There are some of his famous off-kilter ceramics, too, notably…

The Four Sisters by Charles Dickens. It seems odd to refer to anything by Dickens as neglected, but few people seem to know this story of four indistinguishable sisters. It appeared in Dickens’s first publication in book form, Sketches by Boz, 1836 (Penguin £12.99). Mad – and hilarious. Erewhon by Samuel Butler, 1872 (Penguin £12.99). Erewhon (an anagram of nowhere) is a fictional land where illness is regarded as criminal, crime as an illness and machines are banned. Not Butler’s greatest book, but astonishing in its prescience: he predicts and satirises with striking accuracy huge swathes of our modern world – including the rise of AI. The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope, 1882 (University of Michigan Press £17.95). A memorable oddity from Trollope: the governor of another fictional land, Britannula,…

Is reheated rice dangerous? Many home cooks live in fear of “fried rice syndrome” – and so routinely throw out leftover rice, says Joe Zadeh on Vittles. A type of food poisoning, it is caused by Bacillus cereus, a microscopic organism that thrives in starchy foods, and causes horrible bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea, which in some cases can be fatal. Yet in many cultures, reheating rice is normal – and people from those places (anecdotally at least) aren’t always falling ill. So have the risks been exaggerated? Yes and no, says Prof Enzo Palombo, a microbiologist from Melbourne. What’s true is that B. cereus is unusually hardy; unlike most food-borne bacteria, it forms spores which can survive the cooking process. But this is where the confusion lies. Above 65°C,…

Mark Tully 1935-2026 When Rajiv Gandhi was told – while on a road trip deep into India’s interior – that his mother had been assassinated, he refused to believe it, until he had turned on his radio, and heard the news from Mark Tully of the BBC. Known as “the Voice of India”, Tully, who has died in New Delhi aged 90, was one of the most revered foreign correspondents of his generation, said The Guardian. He spent most of his life in India, and over the decades, won respect all over the country for his sensitive, knowledgeable broadcasts on key moments in the nation’s 20th century history – including the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971, the siege at the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the disaster at Bhopal and…

Kevin Warsh “President Trump turned the search for a new Federal Reserve chair into a game show,” said Jonathan Levin on Bloomberg – declaring himself entirely satisfied with the winner. Kevin Warsh, he wrote on Truth Social, will be “one of the GREAT Fed Chairman (sic), maybe the best”. As one of the “two Kevins” deemed likely to take over when Jay Powell’s term ends in May, the nod was hardly out of the blue. Still, he is a curious choice. “Trump demanded a Fed dove” who‘d deliver easier monetary policy – yet picked “a hawk”. No wonder Wall Street succumbed to an acute bout of “cognitive dissonance”. As traders piled into the dollar, gold and silver suffered their worst one-day crash since 1980. Warsh, 55, cut his teeth at…

What happened Days after the US deployed what Donald Trump described as a “massive armada” to the Gulf, Iranian officials agreed to sit down imminently for nuclear talks. President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran had agreed to the US’s invitation at the behest of “friendly governments in the region”. Trump has warned that he could resort to force if no agreement is reached; Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said while he was confident of a deal, Tehran would “immediately and powerfully respond” to any US aggression. The US deployment, which followed antiregime protests in Iran and a brutal crackdown in which up to 36,500 people were killed, is led by the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group. It was 500 miles off the coast of Iran on Tuesday. Trump has urged…

The London Academy of Excellence, a state sixth-form college in Newham, east London, after 62 of its pupils received Oxbridge offers – more than a quarter of its Year 13 cohort. The tally is a record for the high-achieving selective academy. Aamilah Aswat, who became the first black female jockey to win a National Hunt race. The 20-year-old, who got a taste for riding on a visit to a city farm in her home town of Gloucester when she was five, romped to victory on 9-1 shot Guchen in a handicap hurdle at Kempton Park.…

The leader of a Government-commissioned review has proposed 130 measures to speed up justice, and reduce the backlog in the courts in England and Wales. Sir Brian Leveson has warned that the system is on the “brink of collapse”. In the first part of his review last year, he suggested that jury trials be restricted for some offences. His new proposals, focusing on changes that won’t need legislation, include that more professional witnesses testify remotely, and that prison vans should be able to use bus lanes, to ensure defendants arrive on time.…

Washington DC Epstein fallout: The US Department of Justice released some three million more pages, videos and photos from the Epstein files last Friday (see page 16), to comply with a law passed last year. However, campaigners claim that some of the documents are more redacted than justified by the need to protect Epstein’s victims. They have also accused the department of withholding documents. Many high-profile figures are named in the files (which is not evidence of wrongdoing). In emails, Epstein (pictured) suggests that Bill Gates caught an STI after sleeping with “Russian girls”, and tried to get hold of antibiotics to slip to his then-wife. The Microsoft billionaire says the story is “completely false”. Although Donald Trump has not been accused of any crimes, his name crops up often,…

“The thing about Epstein’s many, many powerful [associates] is that if they ever break cover about their appearance in the files – and how terrifyingly quiet they’re all being – they tend to say they had no idea about his crimes. And yet, if one of your friends or my friends went to jail for a year, even if they told us it was a big old mistake/little local difficulty, we’d google what it was all about – right? So imagine being as worldly as Richard Branson/Elon Musk/Peter Mandelson/Steve Bannon/Bill Gates and thinking that a billionaire with billionaires’ lawyers in the malleable US justice system ends up in jail in Florida because of some fit-up.” Marina Hyde in The Guardian…

Self-drive taxis may drive us round the bend Jack Stilgoe The Guardian Look out, London, the robotaxis are coming, says Jack Stilgoe. You’ll be able to hail one here by the end of the year, according to Waymo. But though the US company has operated these vehicles with some success in US cities, London may prove a different proposition. Its street layout is far more irregular; it makes far more concessions to other road users – there’s no law here against jaywalking (police tried cracking down on it in the 1960s, but soon gave up); our zebra crossings involve subtle interactions between drivers and pedestrians. So the big question is whether the AI tech will be made to respond to such complexities, or if Londoners will be made to bend…

Menopause shrinks grey matter It is well established that women are significantly more likely to develop dementia than men, most likely because of differences in longevity, biology and educational background. Now, it seems a loss of grey matter during the menopause may be a further factor. For a University of Cambridge study, researchers looked at data on 124,780 women between 40 and 69 who’d answered questions about their mental and physical health, and also done cognitive tests. About 11,000 of them had undergone MRI scans. The analysis revealed that the women who were post-menopausal had less grey matter – the tissue that processes information – than the others; and crucially, the reductions occurred in areas that tend to be affected by Alzheimer’s, and which are involved in memory and learning,…

Some three million pages of documents were released from the “Epstein files” last week – and, in a way, this vast dump by the US Department of Justice serves Donald Trump best of all, said Edward Luce in the FT, at least in the short term. It is not that his name does not come up (it does, hundreds of times), but that he is in such wide company, other figures are taking up a lot of the air time. We now know that Epstein’s vast network embraced Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Wall Street financiers, European royals and foreign government officials, Republicans and Democrats, heads of major law firms and Ivy League luminaries. And it seems many of them remained on friendly terms with him after his conviction on child…

The T20 World Cup, which is being jointly hosted by India and Sri Lanka and which begins this weekend, is already in a state of “chaos”, said Elizabeth Ammon in The Times. Last month, Bangladesh withdrew from the competition: its relations with India being increasingly fraught, it requested that three of its group games, scheduled to be played in Kolkata, be relocated to Sri Lanka. And when the ICC refused the request, Bangladesh decided to withdraw. (They’ve been replaced by Scotland.) As if that were not bad enough, the turmoil deepened last weekend when Pakistan announced they’d be boycotting their group game against India on 15 February. That has “huge” implications for the host broadcaster JioStar, which was banking on the clash between India and Pakistan attracting a vast global…

To The Guardian The decline of the high street predates austerity by decades (“Labour risks election wipeout unless it improves Britain’s high streets, study finds”). If you encircle towns with retail parks that offer free parking, build houses between them and the bypass (which forces people into cars), and make parking in town centres difficult and expensive, you get urban dystopia, with a few shops that provide the things you can’t buy online. Ipswich is a supreme example of this hollowing out. The obvious answer is to turn empty shops and the buildings they occupy into housing, a change of use that councils perversely seem to resist. Housebuilders (and governments that cosy up to them) won’t like it, of course, because they lose their economies of scale. The solution is…

During Rupert Goold’s “gilded” 13-year tenure at the Almeida Theatre, in north London, it has staged 72 shows, 14 of which have transferred to the West End, and 11 to Broadway. In that time, the powerhouse venue has also bagged 21 Oliviers, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph, for plays including Mike Bartlett’s verse-drama King Charles III and James Graham’s Ink. It is quite a legacy for Goold – the “most exciting director of his generation” – who is now heading south of the river to take over at the Old Vic. For his swansong in Islington, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, Goold has restaged his debut production: an all-singing, all-dancing musical adaptation of American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel about a murderous Wall Street banker. In…

A leading art historian has reignited a longstanding debate about George Stubbs’s Whistlejacket. Famously, the lifesize painting of the eponymous racehorse – commissioned by the animal’s owner, the Marquess of Rockingham, in 1762 – has a plain background. This makes it feel modern, Bendor Grosvenor told The Times, and “we want to believe that Stubbs was having a little experimentation”. But his research leads him to believe that Stubbs painted the horse first, and planned to return to include a landscape – but was stopped by his patron. This theory tallies with an anecdote from the time, in which the horse saw its unfinished portrait, and was so startled, it tried to attack it. The Marquess was supposedly pleased by its reaction, and declared the work complete. In March, Whistlejacket…

Programmes Betrayal David Eldridge’s four-part spy thriller is about a mid-ranking MI5 officer who is told of an imminent threat to the UK. Sun 8 & Mon 9 Feb, ITV1 21:00 (60mins). Lord of the Flies Jack Thorne, who wrote Adolescence, has adapted William Golding’s novel about schoolboys who turn feral after being stranded on a tropical island. Sun 8 Feb, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). Panorama: Knife Crime – What Happened to Our Boys? An investigation into the failings that led to two teenage boys being exploited by criminal gangs and, ultimately, murdered. Mon 9 Feb, BBC1 20:00 (60mins). Small Prophets Mackenzie Crook’s new comedy series stars Pearce Quigley as a lonely twitcher, whose partner disappeared seven years ago. With Michael Palin. Mon 9 Feb, BBC2 22:00 (30 mins). Films The Woman…

Hot peanut butter noodles Serves 1 100g nest of dried thick egg noodles 1 heaped tbsp peanut butter (crunchy or smooth) 1 tsp crispy chilli oil ½ tsp chicken or vegetable stock powder 1½ tsp rice vinegar (or more if you like it tangier) drizzle of sesame oil To serve (optional): fried egg sliced spring onions • Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and cook the noodles according to the packet instructions. • In a serving bowl, combine the peanut butter, crispy chilli oil, stock powder and rice vinegar. Stir well to combine. • Once the noodles are cooked, add 1-2 tablespoons of the hot noodle cooking water to the bowl and stir to create a sauce. • Drain the noodles and add them to the bowl, then toss…

● Don’t use too much detergent – excess suds can actually leave laundry dirtier. Avoid fabric softeners, as they can leave a waxy residue that builds up and makes detergent less effective. Instead, add half a cap of white vinegar to the drawer. ● Tumble dryers are convenient for big loads, but may cost a lot to run. A heat pump tumble dryer is pricier, but will save on your electricity bills in the long run. ● Add tennis balls or wool dryer balls to the drum to speed up drying and soften clothes. If you have a tumble dryer, don’t overload it (or your washing machine for that matter); and clean the filters regularly. ● Small households might be better off with a heated airer. Use a dehumidifier and…

Gladys West 1930-2026 Gladys West was an American mathematician who spent years in the postwar era making complex calculations about the forces that shape the Earth’s surface, using – among other things – some of the earliest IBM supercomputers, said The New York Times. The modelling she did for the US navy would go on to play a critical role in the development of GPS technology. Of course, she could not, at that time, have predicted the impact of her work; and she was almost 90 before her contribution was acknowledged. Gladys Brown was born in rural Virginia in 1930, the daughter of impoverished sharecroppers. As a child, she realised that education offered the only possible escape from her parents’ hard life. So she walked three miles to her segregated,…

Could an end finally be in sight to the saga of Thames Water? Reports suggest that a new £16bn rescue deal with creditors has been hammered out, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Under the terms, they’d take a 30% cut to Thames’s £22.8bn debt pile in exchange for 10% of the equity, and have also pledged £3.15bn of new cash. The negotiations, with sharp-shooters including Elliott, Silver Point and Pimco, have been conducted behind closed doors and much of the detail is obscure. That doesn’t bode well. Nor does “the lack of commitment by the creditors beyond 2030”. It will take longer than that to turn around this “notoriously leaky tanker”.…

Adolescent angst Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, has done the AI “equivalent of pulling the fire alarm”, said Danny Fortson in The Sunday Times. The gist of his new 19,000-word essay, The Adolescence of Technology, is that we still haven’t awoken to an inevitable reckoning as ever-more intelligent systems test “who we are as a species”. OpenClaw Leading the charge in that “step change”, said Aisha Down in The Guardian, is OpenClaw – a new viral “AI personal assistant” that promises to run your life with “almost no input”. Formerly known as Moltbot, it was launched in November by Austrian engineer Peter Steinberger. The possibilities are infinite: from texting “good morning” to your spouse to running your portfolio. Security experts are aghast: if hacked, agents such as OpenClaw “could be manipulated…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares Crest Nicholson Holdings Investors’ Chronicle The housebuilder, which focuses on mid-premium homes in the South East, is benefitting from improved trading conditions. Profits are up 30%, aided by land sales, and debt is lower than guidance. Buy. 154p. Kooth Sharecast The mental health digital services provider has underperformed, due to worries over a US contract renewal and subdued UK growth. Canaccord has lowered its target to 330p, but expects a return to profit. Buy. 123.5p. Luceco Citywire The lighting specialist’s EV charger sales have risen by 85% and profits are expected to beat forecasts. “Powered by its increasing exposure to energy transition”, concludes Berenberg, which has raised the target to 175p. Buy. 148p. Marston’s Citywire Christmas sales were flat for the pub/restaurant operator,…

The Outside Project is an LGBTIQ+ Community Centre and Shelter, and Domestic Abuse Refuge for those within the LGBTIQ+ community who feel endangered, and who also feel that they are on the outside of services owing to historical and present prejudice in society and in their homes. Since the Covid emergency response and the founding of one of the UK’s first LGBTIQ+ domestic abuse refuges in 2020, the organisation works tirelessly to address the absence of LGBTIQ+ crisis housing for London’s estimated half a million LGBTIQ+ population. Visit lgbtiqoutside.org for more information.…