Table of contents for 1392 in The Week

What happened The Tory leadership election officially got under way this week as the party’s MPs began winnowing down the contenders to succeed Boris Johnson. Of the dozen candidates who had thrown their hat into the ring by Tuesday, eight received sufficient backing to get onto the ballot. Of these, six made it through the first round of voting on Wednesday, including the early frontrunner Rishi Sunak and the bookies’ next two favourites, Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss. The final two surviving candidates, provided that neither drops out, will go forward to a postal vote of around 160,000 party members over the summer, the winner of which will be unveiled on 5 September. Johnson said he would not be endorsing any of the candidates, lest he damage their chances by…

By last Wednesday evening, Boris Johnson’s premiership “was in freefall”, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times. Ministers and aides were resigning in droves; more than 50 would quit over a 48-hour period, including the newly appointed education secretary, Michelle Donellan, who resigned after only 35 hours in the job. While his Government fell apart, Johnson was “huddled in his office” with a few remaining “uberloyalists”, including Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, his spokesman Guto Harri, and the Tory chairman, Ben Elliot. They urged him to “look strong”. At 9pm, the PM called Michael Gove, the minister for levelling up, who asked: “Are you resigning?” Johnson replied: “No, Mikey, mate, I’m afraid you are.” But in the end, he just didn’t have enough support. Grant Shapps, who had played a crucial…

Andrea Jenkyns, the new education minister, who was accused of setting a bad example to children by giving the middle finger to a hostile crowd outside Downing Street. On Twitter, Jenkyns said that she had been at the “end of my tether”, having received seven death threats in four years. Bernie Ecclestone, with news that he has been charged with tax fraud. The former Formula One boss, now 91, is accused of failing to declare overseas assets worth more than £400m. Mindfulness, after a study found that introducing mindfulness training in schools does not boost wellbeing in teenagers. Researchers said that it helped the teachers involved, but pupils found the lessons boring, and did not practise the technique.…

Berlin Swastika displayed: German police have opened an investigation into how a 60m-wide swastika came to be mown into a field north of Berlin. The Nazi symbol was spotted by Bild journalist Julian Röpcke as he was flying over the village of Niederfinow. He photographed it, the police arrived, and it has since been removed. The owner of the land, and a man who’d recently mown the field, have now been identified by police. In Germany, displaying “unconstitutional symbols”, other than for the purposes of art, research, science or teaching, is a crime that carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison. Berlin Gas supply fears: The Nord Stream 1 pipeline that supplies Russian gas to Germany has shut down for routine maintenance – and the German economics minister…

1 Portrait of Trinidad by M. Hodge, performed by Mighty Sniper 2 Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2 by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd 3 Time Will Tell, written and performed by Jimmy Cliff 4 The Boxer by Paul Simon, performed by Simon & Garfunkel 5 It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World by James Brown and Betty Jean Newsome, performed by James Brown and the Famous Flames 6 Desiderata by Max Ehrmann and Fred Werner, performed by Les Crane 7 Maria La O by Ernesto Lecuona, performed by Neil Latchman 8* Bridge Over Troubled Water by Paul Simon, performed by Simon & Garfunkel Book: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace Luxury: A tenor steel pan drum * Choice if allowed only one record…

In April, Nature Genetics reported that scores of gene-edited crops were being trialled across 25 countries, but that fewer than ten had been approved for commercialisation. In Japan, the Sicilian Rouge High GABA tomato has gone on sale; it has a high level of GABA, an amino acid thought to lower blood pressure. In the USA, a high-oleic soybean oil (low in saturated fats) is on the market. Scores of others are in the pipeline: mushrooms with longer shelf lives, drought-resistant corn, bananas impervious to Panama disease, a fungus threatening the global supply. In Britain, The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich has created a tomato that’s resistant to mildew, and which requires much less fungicide. The Roslin Institute at Edinburgh University has developed pigs that are immune to porcine reproductive and…

Guns are destroying public life Henry Grabar Slate Seven dead, dozens injured. A two-year-old boy orphaned. The recent mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, is just the latest horrendous symptom of America’s gun culture, says Henry Grabar. Beyond the dead and wounded, there are hundreds of other people in mourning, and thousands more who “will never celebrate Independence Day the same way again”. One more event has been sullied, one more freedom sacrificed. Slowly but surely, firearms are “throttling American public life, chipping away at our experience of school, shopping, protest, celebration, debate, electoral politics”. It’s not just the shooting sprees. The growing presence of guns in public spaces has had a chilling effect – as many conservatives acknowledge. In 2014, when “open-carry” activists…

The NHS is planning to use drones to speed up the delivery of chemotherapy drugs to cancer patients in England. For a trial scheme, drones will carry drugs from a hospital pharmacy in Portsmouth across the Solent to St Mary’s Hospital on the Isle of Wight, a journey that should take half an hour. Currently, some cancer patients on the island have to take a three-to four-hour round trip to the mainland to collect their drugs, many of which have a short shelf life. The drones, which have a wingspan of five metres, can carry loads of up to 20kg. Darren Cattell, the chief executive of the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, stressed that the scheme – a partnership between the NHS and technology firm Apian – was “at a…

Living in Japan, you “get used to not thinking about violent crime”, said Rupert Wingfield-Hayes on BBC News. Strict gun laws mean that hunters can apply for licences, but must go through a series of stringent tests. In a nation of 126 million people, fewer than ten people a year are shot dead – some linked to Yakuza organised crime. So it’s hard to overstate our nation’s state of shock, said Yuki Matsuzaki on The Independent, at the “barbaric” assassination of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister (see page 38). Abe, who left office two years ago, was killed by a man using a crude homemade gun while he campaigned in the small city of Nara ahead of elections. He was a controversial right-winger who had many “political enemies”; yet…

No one knew what to expect from this year’s Wimbledon men’s final, said Stuart Fraser in The Times. It was a contest pitting the “ruthless Serbian warrior” Novak Djokovic – competing in his 32nd grand slam singles final – against the volatile Nick Kyrgios, appearing in his first. The Australian’s passage to the final had been anything but “quiet”, said Rosamund Urwin in The Sunday Times. Over the fortnight, he’d racked up thousands of pounds in fines, his offences ranging from spitting at a spectator to swearing at officials. And days before the final, it emerged that a former girlfriend had accused him of assault. In a sport obsessed with decorum, Kyrgios is the ultimate “bad boy” outsider: not since the days of John McEnroe has the All England Club…

To The Times One of the unnecessary complications of the Downing Street drama is the time it will now take to elect a new Conservative leader and hence prime minister. Part of Boris Johnson’s defence in recent days had been to warn of the dangers of months of uncertainty. There is a simple way to shorten the process and minimise the period of lame-duck administration: hand the power to choose new party leaders back to MPs. Given the experiences of Conservative MPs in recent weeks, and that of Labour MPs when they had Jeremy Corbyn foisted on them, might there now be an appetite in both main parties to reverse one of the less happy political reforms of the past 40 years? Peter Kellner, former president, YouGov To The Times…

by Katherine J. Chen Hodder & Stoughton 368pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 The story of Joan of Arc – a 15th-century peasant girl from northeast France who became a national heroine – has been told many times before, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph. But in her second novel, the American writer Katherine J. Chen offers a “fresh and utterly enthralling take”. Her Joan is not a religious icon – “gone are the visions” – but primarily a “woman of action”: she’s a child of remarkable physical gifts who, through a series of “serendipitous events”, becomes a key ally of the dauphin (later King Charles VII), helping to lead his armies against the English. “Vivid, visceral and boldly immediate”, the novel has already earned comparisons with Hilary Mantel’s…

Antonio Calderara: From Lake Orta at Lisson Gallery Nobody ever accused Antonio Calderara of courting fame. An autodidact, Calderara (1903-78) spent much of his life in near-isolation on the shores of Lake Orta, northwest of Milan, where he devoted himself to the study of painting’s mysteries. This show charts his work from the 1940s to the 1970s, presenting his fascinating journey from tentative figuration to pure, confident abstraction. Early pictures, such as a strange, elongated portrait of a woman and a Morandi-like still-life, give scant clue of wonders to come. By the mid-1950s, he is producing gorgeous, hazy landscapes of Orta’s environs, gradually reducing the constituent elements until he arrives at the geometrical abstraction for which he is best known. Best of all are a series of late watercolours, in…

● Your mission is to stop your audience zoning out. Remember that they are bored before you even open your mouth, and that you’re competing with their mobiles. ● Your listeners will only remember one idea at most, so present a single insight and back it up with evidence and anecdotes, which are easier to absorb than ideas. ● Speak for less than your allotted time, so that you don’t have to rush the end if time is running out. Don’t read from a script as it will sound boring; memorise your speech by saying it out loud every day for five days before. Bring notes in case you go blank. ● Keep it visually interesting by moving around the stage and look at the audience. Use slides or videos…

Peter Brook 1925-2022 “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage,” declared Peter Brook, in his 1968 book The Empty Space: “A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.” One of the 20th century’s greatest and most influential theatre directors, Brook, who has died aged 97, was an energetic but cerebral figure with a “sage-like aura”, whose great achievement was to “expand thrillingly the boundaries of Western stage production”, said The Times. His theatre had “nothing to do with proscenium arches [or] plush curtains”. Instead, he stripped the stage down to its essentials, urged his actors not to act but to feel and imagine; and –…

Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani “I am responsible for everything at Theranos,” wrote Sunny Balwani in 2015 when the supposedly revolutionary blood-testing company, founded by his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Holmes, was riding high. Those words have returned to haunt him, said James Clayton on BBC Business. Pakistan-born Balwani, 57, has been convicted of 12 counts of fraud (compared with Holmes’s four counts), including a charge of “defrauding patients”, which she avoided. He was just as culpable for the scandal, if not more so, than the founder herself. The verdict vindicates the “risky” decision by Holmes’s legal team to put her on the witness stand. But it’s bound to cause anxiety in Silicon Valley. “It sets an important legal warning to managers” – it’s not always the boss who will carry the can. Nikolay…

The Trussell Trust’s food parcels are designed to provide three days’ worth of balanced meals. So what’s it like to live on one? Stephen Bleach finds out Day one Breakfast: Cornflakes, apple juice. Haven’t had cornflakes for years. They’re tastier than I remember… but not very substantial. At least I have long-life milk and plenty of tea bags. Lunch: Tin of broccoli-and-stilton soup. I was looking forward to this but it’s actively unpleasant, tasting of tinny reflux. 4.30pm: More cornflakes, apple juice. Because I’m famished. Dinner: Tin of tomatoes, tin of tuna, spaghetti, dash of ketchup; tin of peaches for afters. Rather tasty. Don’t like the peaches. Day two Pre-breakfast: Four Hobnobs. I need energy for my weekly run and usually eat a banana. Biscuits do the job. Breakfast: Cornflakes,…

What happened Sri Lanka’s president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country on Wednesday, taking a military flight to the Maldives with his wife and two security guards. He had previously attempted to flee to Dubai, but had been turned back by staff at the airport. His ousting followed months of deepening economic chaos; shortages of food, fuel and basic goods; and mass protests against his rule. The crisis came to a head last weekend after the PM, Ranil Wickremesinghe – now also the acting president – declared the country bankrupt. Hundreds of thousands of people descended on Colombo, and stormed Rajapaksa’s palatial residence. Protesters also burned down the PM’s home. Following Rajapaksa’s departure, crowds stormed the office of the PM, who declared a state of emergency and ordered the military “do…

For generations, children were exhorted not to talk with their mouths full; but many younger people seem to have turned their back on such social niceties. In a survey of 18 to 40 year-olds, three-quarters of respondents said they thought most of the table manners followed by their grandparents were no longer relevant. Half said there was no need to swallow your food before speaking; two in five thought conventions such as sitting up straight, and asking to leave the table, were out of date; 46% said it was fine to tuck in before the rest of the table had been served; 38% saw no need for napkins. However, there are some new rules of etiquette: vaping is not acceptable at the modern table, and mobile phones should be put…

The Royal Military Police (RMP) is to investigate claims that SAS “death squads” killed scores of unarmed men in Afghanistan. According to a BBC documentary, 54 people may have been unlawfully killed by one SAS unit during a six-month tour in 2010/2011. Based on their four-year investigation, the Panorama team said there was evidence of a “pattern” of night-time “kill/capture” operations, in which male detainees were shot dead, and that senior officers had covered up the alleged atrocities. The Ministry of Defence accused the BBC of jumping to “unjustified conclusions”, and of broadcasting “incorrect” allegations that put serving soldiers at risk. However, the RMP has asked the BBC to share what new evidence it has of possible war crimes.…

Montrose, Colorado Undertaker sells bodies: An undertaker in Colorado has admitted to stealing and selling body parts. Megan Hess, 45, owner of the Sunset Mesa funeral home, sold arms, legs, spines and heads to surgical-training firms, via a broker company she’d set up. She is also thought to have extracted and sold gold teeth. Families, some of whom were given cut-price deals to lure them in, assumed that their dead relatives had been cremated, but the urns she gave them contained other material. Having admitted to defrauding at least a dozen families, she could be jailed for up to 20 years at her sentencing hearing, in January. Yosemite, California Fires spread: Some of the world’s oldest and largest trees are at risk from the wildfire spreading through California’s Yosemite National…

“I would like whoever replaces Boris Johnson to make one pledge: that he or she will immediately permit a full World of Interiors-style shoot in the Prime Minister’s Downing Street flat. I want to see all the mad Lulu Lytle clashing chintzes, OTT trompe-l’oeil, neocolonial rattan day-beds and, above all, to know if Carrie chose £840 per roll wallpaper in yellow or old gold. When Ceausescu fell, ordinary Romanians turned up for a nose around his palace. A weary British nation deserves a few Polaroids at least.” Janice Turner in The Times…

No, we want more butter not more guns Simon Kuper The Financial Times It’s the new orthodoxy: to contain Russian aggression the West must remilitarise. Before the Ukraine war, Nato members aimed to devote up to 2% of GDP to defence, a figure they now regard as a bare minimum. At Nato’s recent summit, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talked of an eightfold expansion in the forces on high alert. Yet is such extra spending wise, or even necessary? I doubt it, says Simon Kuper. It’s not as if we’re the underdog. Russia spent $66bn on defence last year: the US a mighty $801bn. And the combined military budget of the other Nato nations, $363bn, dwarfs Russia’s, too. So why splash out yet more on arms when there are so many…

Sad music isn’t sad for everyone In the West, we tend to think of melodies played in the major key as happy songs, whereas those in the minor key sound sad to us. But these perceptions may not be not universal. Researchers in Australia played major and minor melodies to people living in five communities in Papua New Guinea, as well as to a group from Sydney. Most of the Australians found the major melodies happy and the minor ones sad, as expected, as did the people from PNG who had had significant exposure to Western musical traditions; but those from the most remote of the five communities, who’d had only “sporadic experience” of Western music, tended not to differentiate between the keys in this way. It’s not clear why…

Keir Starmer must be enjoying himself, said Katy Balls in The Spectator. As if it weren’t enough that Boris Johnson’s premiership has imploded, and the Tories are in disarray as candidates vie to replace him, the Labour leader has now been exonerated over “Beergate”. Durham police announced recently that they would not be issuing fixed penalty notices to either Starmer or his deputy, Angela Rayner, for enjoying a beer and a takeaway curry with party activists in April 2021 while campaigning for the local elections. Though Covid rules were still in place, the police said there was “no case to answer” as there was an exemption at the time for “reasonably necessary work”. Starmer’s political gamble has paid off, said Heather Stewart in The Guardian. When the Beergate story came…

by Matt Roland Hill Chatto & Windus 320pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 Matt Rowland Hill’s “turbulent debut” is “electric from the off”, said Anthony Cummins in The Observer. His memoir of addiction begins with him injecting heroin at a funeral – plunging the reader “irresistibly” into its hellish story. The son of an oppressively strict Welsh Baptist minister, Hill attended a state comprehensive before winning a scholarship to a well-known public school, where he felt out of place. At Oxford, he became addicted to heroin, “heralding a decade of dependency, criminality and near-death”. Original Sins is written with such “novelistic verve” that you could easily mistake it for fiction, though some of the details might make you raise an eyebrow. “How he first came to use heroin beggars belief”…

Running time: 2hrs 40mins “There’s something enjoyably ironic about Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke’s choice of West End debut,” said Alice Saville in the London Evening Standard. In a modern and intentionally static staging of Chekhov’s The Seagull, she plays the “aspiring-but-untalented” actress Nina, who “beams” with delight when told she could make it in films one day. In real life, of course, it’s Clarke’s screen fame that has helped “pack out” this “uncompromising” production. Clarke has undeniable charisma, and she’s not the only good thing about the production, staged by “super-director” Jamie Lloyd. Among a uniformly excellent cast, Daniel Monks is “compellingly unlikeable” as Konstantin, the would-be playwright who is obsessed with Nina; and Indira Varma is “mesmerising” as Konstantin’s actress mother, Arkadina. In Lloyd’s production, Chekhovian naturalism…

Black Bird’s premise is so neat, it sounds like something dreamed up by scriptwriters; but in fact, it’s rooted in a true story, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) lived the high life as a drug dealer, until he was caught, and given a ten-year jail term. Then the FBI offered him a deal: if he elicited a confession from a suspected serial killer, he could walk free. Keene agreed to the challenge, and over six episodes, we find out if he pulled it off. The show weaves together two timelines: Keene’s dealings with the killer, Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser); and the investigation into Hall. The structure doesn’t quite work – you often want Keene’s story to barrel ahead – but the writing keeps…

There is discussion at Bridge Farm about expanding into mozzarella production. When Pat reminds Tom they’ll have their hands full soon, Natasha announces that her mum’s coming to help with the babies. Pat gives a muted response. At the fete meeting, Oliver offers to help fund the event. Lynda turns him down. Tracy’s boss, Gemma, takes against her after she suggests some safety improvements. Will talks to Lynda about his pottery stall at the fete, and says he’s sorry she refused Oliver’s money. Lynda explains that she can’t get over the Grey Gables closure. Will encourages Lynda to see Oliver’s position. Lynda visits Oliver and relents. After more fibs, Steph finally admits that Ben didn’t want to kiss her. Vince asks Steph to move out; he has to stop treating…

Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a light lunch 100g sunflower seeds 2 tbsp mild vinegar, to taste (cider or rice vinegar is good) 1 tbsp honey, to taste 1 tbsp soy sauce, or 1 tsp sea salt, to taste 2 tbsp unrefined sunflower oil (you can use sesame or rapeseed here or something nutty to intensify the flavour) 1 pointed (hispi) cabbage, or regular white cabbage • Preheat the oven to 180°C fan. To make the dressing, put the seeds on a baking tray and roast in the oven for 6 minutes. They should become golden and tasty. You may need to give them a little shake and put them back in for another 2 minutes; use your judgement here, as ovens vary. • Blitz most…

Hum London was founded in lockdown by sisters Hermione and Ellie Gee, who handpaint their shades with stripes, ginghams and leopard prints (humlondon.com). Lights & Lamps, founded by Niki Wright and Scarlett Hampton, has a selection of design-led lighting which includes an exclusive range of rattan and raffia drum shades (lightsandlamps.com). Nushka’s collection of fabric lampshades are handmade in the UK using a variety of fabrics including cotton, linen and even vintage silk saris. Nushka also offers a bespoke lampshade service for any size in your choice of fabric (nushka.co.uk). Highly regarded by interior designers, Pooky has a huge collection of lampshades in a range of shapes, sizes, colours and styles to suit any interior (pooky.com). Alexandra John makes beautiful shades to order for Munro and Kerr using hand-marbled, printed…

A peaceful paddle down the Severn In the 18th century, it was Europe’s second busiest waterway, but today the River Severn sees barely any traffic. With Shrewsbury Canoe Hire, you can paddle along it for four days, says Sarah Baxter in The Times: it’s an easy-going journey through a timeless corner of rural England, with pretty B&Bs booked for you in advance. In places, there are views of the Wrekin (“Shropshire’s 407-metre-high Kilimanjaro”), but much of the time you float in solitude between high banks, through lush, other-wordly channels of “shingly beaches and green reflections”, where the seed-fluff floats “like fairies”, and sand martins hawk “over the shallows”. No experience is needed – the trip starts with a lesson – and the towns along the way (Shrewsbury, Ironbridge and Bridgnorth)…

Shinzo Abe 1954-2022 Shinzo Abe was a dominant figure in postwar Japanese politics, said The Times, and his country’s longest-serving prime minister. A right-wing nationalist, bent on restoring Japanese pride and confidence, he was known for his battles to reform the country’s pacifistic constitution, drafted by the US in 1947; for his efforts to forge international alliances and new trade deals; and for his attempt to jumpstart Japan’s moribund economy, with the programme known as Abenomics. In a reference to a Japanese folk story, he said it had three “arrows”: loose monetary policy; expansionary fiscal policy; and structural reform that included encouraging more women into the workplace. Born in Tokyo in 1954, Shinzo Abe was the scion of a right-wing political dynasty. His grandfather was Nobusuke Kishi, a suspected war…

Some 1.3 million British households will have to remortgage this year, as they come to the end of their fixed-rate deals. They could be in for a shock, said Melissa Lawford on Telegraph.co.uk. “Five consecutive interest rate rises from the Bank of England”, combined with soaring inflation, “could see their disposable income fall by more than a quarter”, according to trade body UK Finance’s analysis of figures. Worst hit will be those who took out mortgages when interest rates were at an all-time record low of 0.1% two years ago. The annual disposable income of someone earning £65,000 is set to fall from £27,086 to £20,839 – after tax, basic household expenditure and credit commitments. Lower earners will see even larger proportionate drops. “It is massive,” said UK Finance’s James…

Accsys Technologies Investors’ Chronicle Demand for the treated wood manufacturer’s products, Tricoya and Accoya, far outstrips supply. Delays to new plants have hit finances, but profits should double as additional capacity comes on stream. Buy. 110p. Argentex Group Investors’ Chronicle The forex dealer is benefitting as corporate clients increase currency trades, hedges, swaps and forward contracts to offset the sagging value of sterling. Well placed to withstand mounting competition. Buy. 82p. Bango Investors’ Chronicle This mobile payments platform, which charges app store purchases to smartphone accounts, has signed a “transformational” deal with a global tech group, believed to be Apple. Growth is supported by valuable data assets. Buy. 164p. Harvest Minerals The Mail on Sunday Harvest transforms weathered lava into pure organic fertiliser for local farmers in Brazil. Much needed,…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1320 An Ettinger shoe horn 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 25 July. Send it to The Week Crossword 1320, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid or listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) Bridle Hide travel shoehorn in black, which retails at £75, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Yak aren’t lost around capital of Tibet (6) 4 In favour of charges for attacking footballers (8) 10 City pub with Conservative drunk on ale (9) 11 Source of whisky even today (5) 12 Could be recession then a bit of mismanagement…

Mo Farah, who was inundated with messages of support after revealing that he was a victim of modern child slavery. Previously, the Olympic champion said he’d arrived as a refugee with his parents; in fact, he was trafficked to the UK aged nine. Blowin’ in the Wind, after a one-off recording of the Bob Dylan song sold for almost £1.48m at auction. Made in March 2021, on a new audio medium called Ionic Original, it was Dylan’s first studio recording of the track since 1962. Mark Rowley, who was named as the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, replacing Dame Cressida Dick. A former head of counter-terrorism, he has pledged a zero-tolerance approach to rogue officers in the force, which was recently placed in “special measures” by the HM Inspectorate…

Almost half of the British public would like the HS2 rail project to be scrapped. Of those who voted Conservative in 2019, 17% think HS2 should go ahead. 52% believe it shouldn’t. Redfield and Wilton/The Daily Telegraph 88% of American adults believe the US is on the wrong track. Just 10% believe it’s on the right track, the lowest since 2013. Inflation ranks as the chief concern (among 33% of adults), followed by gas prices (15%), and the economy (9%). Monmouth/Forbes 41% of UK adults say they check their phone multiple times an hour. 17% would send a chasing message to a friend who didn’t reply within 60 minutes. YouGov/The Sunday Times…

Freeing Nazanin At 5am on 3 April 2016, Richard Ratcliffe’s phone rang. His wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, had been taken into custody while returning from a trip to Iran. A problem with her passport, his brother-in-law explained. At first, Richard thought little of it. “I literally went off to work the next day as normal,” he says, shaking his head. But soon, his complacency gave way to panic. He was advised by the Foreign Office to keep quiet about his wife’s arrest. But within a few weeks, he had taken the decision to go public. What happened over the next six years is familiar. Nazanin was charged with spying, and kept in tiny, windowless cells for months on end. Richard campaigned ceaselessly for his wife’s release, staging hunger strikes and lobbying…

Prosecutors in Taiwan have dropped charges against three people accused of kidnap, on the grounds that the incident was a “surprise marriage proposal” that went awry. Yang, 24, decided to propose to her girlfriend, Huang, in a memorable way, so she paid two men to burst into her flat and bundle her into a suitcase. Yang and the men then drove to a register office with Huang in the boot, where she, Yang, was going to propose. But when the car stopped, Huang jumped out, shouting, “Help! I was kidnapped!”; a passing policeman arrested the men. A fortune teller known as Mystic Veg has been using asparagus to shed light on who will become the next prime minister. Jemma Packington says she foresaw both Brexit and Prince Philip’s death by…

ITALY Ostriches with their heads in a dry river bed Rolling Stone Italia (Milan) They were bound to turn up sooner or later, the “drought deniers”, says Giuseppe Luca Scaffidi. Italy is enduring its worst water shortages in 70 years: rainfall levels are 50% down on their yearly average; snowfall last winter was down 70%; stretches of the River Po have run dry; farmers who rely on it for irrigation are in despair, and a state of emergency has been declared in five regions. Yet, with weary predictability, a clamour of voices are now saying the problem isn’t real. Social media is awash with claims that all the “chatter of drought and alleged water crises” is just “disinformation”. These deniers insist “there is water” in the Po, and have been…

Neil Parish, who resigned after being spotted watching porn in the House of Commons, issued a grovelling apology to his wife, Sue (pictured), at the time, saying: “I’m sorry you married a f*****g idiot”. And she has been staunch in his defence. In an interview with the Daily Mail last week, she pointed out that her husband had only watched porn “in a little corner somewhere”, and that anyway, “people shouldn’t be looking over other people’s shoulders when they’re looking at their mobiles”. He wasn’t ”in the middle of the chamber waving it around”, she added. “He was just waiting for votes. He hates to wait.” US politics is filled with people with silly names, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Standouts include Young Boozer, Alabama’s state treasurer; Dick…

“It is necessary to get behind someone in order to stab them in the back.” Sir Humphrey Appleby, quoted in The Times “You have your own rules as you get older. I would prefer to live alone for the rest of my life rather than live with towels that were folded incorrectly.” Graham Norton, quoted in The Mirror “Very few politicians are hypocrites, because the first people whom they persuade with their arguments are themselves.” Douglas Hurd quoted in The Times “A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.” Goethe, quoted on The Knowledge “The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.” Nietzsche, quoted in The Monthly “Taste has no system and no proofs.” Susan…

Time-wasting technology To The Economist Sadly, I fear Bartleby’s belief that technology will lead to less wasted time at work is misguided. We recently moved to jazzy new headquarters, fully digitally enabled. In practice, this means I now require four new apps on my phone. One has my access pass to get in. Another lets me reserve a desk, book a meeting room or open my locker. A third enables me to buy my lunch. The fourth provides a secure verification to access all the other apps. As a result, every time I am at the office I add five minutes of swearing to my day as I open the incorrect app and another nine minutes staring at my screen so that I can use face recognition to avoid entering…

by Chris Patten Allen Lane 560pp £30 The Week Bookshop £24 (incl. p&p) Chris Patten was “one of the big beasts of British politics” when the voters of Bath rejected him as their MP at the 1992 general election, said Stephen Vines in Literary Review. It led him to take up a post which “he had never expected to occupy”: that of the “last governor” of Hong Kong. In 1984, Britain had struck a deal with China to hand back its “last remaining major colony” on the stroke of midnight on 30 June 1997. As governor during the build-up to the handover, Patten’s task was to ensure that Hong Kong’s “basic freedoms” were robust enough to “survive the transfer of sovereignty”. Patten has now published his diaries from this period,…

Nick Cave: Seven Psalms Bad Seed Ltd £20 Seven Psalms is a short (25 minute) album made up of seven “intimate prayers”, written by Nick Cave during the 2020 lockdown, and delivered by him against a backing of reverberant synths and piano played by Warren Ellis, his chief collaborator. For any other major rock artist, this would rank as a “dramatically left-field turn”, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. But Cave’s changing relationship to God and his faith is a “kind of connective tissue that runs throughout his body of work”. This isn’t a major Cave release; it feels more like an addendum to last year’s Carnage. But it’s an “extremely powerful album”, displaying the talent of two “superb writers, at the top of their game”. Seven Psalms is less…

This exhibition showcases 11 artists from the African diaspora “who use fantasy, myth and fiction to address racism and injustice”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Each artist is granted the amount of space equivalent to that normally taken up by an entire solo presentation, so that they have “space to breathe, and to sing”; while a “judicious selection also allows for echoes and connections throughout”. The show incorporates video, painting, sculpture, collage, and even costume design, and the effect is little short of mesmerising. All of the art here is “wildly imaginative”, from a series of “life-size” papier-mâché sculptures by the Kenyan-American Wangechi Mutu to the “sumptuous” self-portraits of Liberian-British artist Lina Iris Viktor, in which she depicts herself as the prophetess Sibyl foretelling “the horrors of the transatlantic…

Oranges by John McPhee, 1967 (Daunt Books £9.99). Juice sipped at Penn Station prompted McPhee to ask, “What am I drinking?” The answer resulted in this slim book which explores a specific food from all angles: history, culture, industry, taste, trade and nutrition. McPhee created a template for all food journalists to follow, me included. The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann, 2018 (Picador £14.99). This is the essential text in explaining how most of the planet came to farm and eat. In profiling the lives of two 20th-century scientists – environmentalist William Vogt and plant breeder Norman Borlaug – Mann goes to the heart of one of the most urgent of all questions: how should we feed the world? On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, 1984…

Programmes The Control Room An emergency call handler for Glasgow’s ambulance service takes a desperate call from a woman, who somehow knows his name, in this gripping three-part thriller from the producers of Sherlock. Sunday 17 July, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). Unvaccinated Scientist Hannah Fry meets seven people who have not had the Covid jab, to shed light on why five million are still unvaccinated. Wed 20 July, BBC2 21:00 (65mins). Maryland Award-winning playwright Lucy Kirkwood has adapted her 2021 play – written in response to a spate of high-profile murders of women – for the small screen. With Daniel Mays, Zawe Ashton and Hayley Squires. Wed 20 July, BBC2 10:05 (25mins). Big Oil v the World Three-part documentary looking at what the fossil-fuel industry knew about climate change four decades…

Madrid city break Spend 3 nights at the 4-star Riu Plaza España, one of the tallest buildings in Madrid. From £175pp b&b, two sharing (flights excl). 020-3386 8411, lastminute.com. Arrive 30 August. Five nights in Kusadasi Perched on a hill overlooking Turkey’s Aegean coast is the Labranda Ephesus Princess. £550pp all-inclusive (Manchester flights incl). 0161-509 3700, onthebeach.co.uk. Depart 5 September. All-inclusive in Egypt Stay 7 nights at the elegant 5-star Xperience Sea Breeze Resort, nestled on the shores of Shark’s Bay, from £374pp, two sharing (flights excl). 020-3024 8211, expedia.co.uk. Arrive 1 September. Italian Riviera & France Take in some of Europe’s chicest cities on this 9-night cruise, with stops in Marseille, Naples and La Spezia, from £1,329pp full-board. 0808-239 5985, cruise118.com. Depart 27 August. Covid-19: please check government websites…

Uniper: German gas casualty “Germany is rationing hot water, dimming street lights and closing swimming pools” as the impact of its “energy crunch” begins to spread from industry to wider society, said Guy Chazan in the Financial Times. An “emergency levy” on all gas consumers is in the offing, designed to raise funds to avert a feared “Lehman Brothers-style meltdown” of the whole imported gas sector. One big domino has already fallen. Uniper, Germany (and Europe’s) largest buyer of Russian gas, recently requested “a formal state bailout” for as much as s9bn, having been losing “tens of millions of euros a day”. Gas flows from Russia are down about 60% on their standard capacity before the start of the Ukraine war. Sparks are flying in Europe over the bailout, said…

Time to mend fences with business… Ben Wright The Daily Telegraph One of the easiest tasks in the next PM’s “overflowing” in-tray will be improving the Government’s relations with business, says Ben Wright. They could hardly get any worse. Boris Johnson’s successor “need only refrain from telling the private sector to procreate with itself” – while avoiding any mention of Peppa Pig – to start rebuilding fences. “The tragic irony of Johnson’s premiership is that so many of his big policies were only going to work if his administration worked hand-in-glove with business.” The private sector should have been at the heart of big bets on levelling up, investing in renewable energy, creating a scientific powerhouse and forging new trade deals. And yet the “default” position when problems arose “was…