Table of contents for 1404 in The Week

Liz Truss must know that she is only Prime Minister “because the last one very publicly set fire to his credibility”, said Tom Peck on The Independent. So it’s “unfortunate” that she has done the very same to her own. The new PM’s mini-Budget “trashed the UK’s international reputation” and “spooked” the banks. Her attempts to reassure the nation in its wake were, if anything, worse: her awkward, pause-laden interviews with eight “incredulous” local radio hosts last Thursday were described by the historian Dan Snow as “the worst provincial campaign” since 1216, when King John “caught dysentery in Norfolk, lost the Crown Jewels in The Wash and died in Nottinghamshire”. The PM vigorously defended the abolition of the 45p tax rate right up until she performed “the mother of all…

First-time buyers, after the typical interest rate for a two-year fixed-rate mortgage exceeded 6% for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis. The increase will also affect tens of thousands of homeowners who are nearing the end of their current mortgages. The Sackler family, with news that the V&A in London is to rename its Sackler Centre and its Sackler Courtyard. The museum was the final major UK institution to have retained the Sackler name, which has been tainted by the family’s association with the addictive opioid painkiller OxyContin. Rebekah Vardy, who was ordered to pay 90% of the legal fees incurred by Coleen Rooney while fighting the “Wagatha Christie” defamation suit – about £1.5m. Rooney’s costs totalled more than £2m, but £350,000 of that was racked up before…

Brussels Common charger law: MEPs have backed a “common charger” bill that would oblige all small electronic devices, including smartphones and tablets, to have the same charger port. The legislation, which is designed to make life easier for consumers and reduce waste, specifies that all portable electronic devices sold in the EU must have USB-C ports by 2024. Laptops will have to be compatible by 2026. Apple has objected most loudly to the move, as its iPhones have lightning ports. It has warned that the switch will create more waste, but over time, the law is expected to lead to a significant reduction. Charger leads are responsible for between 11,000 and 13,000 tonnes of waste each year, according to the European Commission; however, that is only a tiny proportion of…

Streeting’s single mother Having been treated for kidney cancer last year, Wes Streeting – the shadow health secretary – feels well qualified to talk about the NHS, says Caroline Wheeler in The Sunday Times. But the Labour MP also knows a thing or two about the criminal justice system. His grandfather was an armed robber, and his grandmother was jailed for possessing stolen goods. In HMP Holloway she shared a cell with Christine Keeler – and Wes’s mother, Corinna, spent the first six weeks of her life in the prison. Corinna was then put in care, and she left school with no qualifications. She was 18 when she had Wes with her 17-year-old boyfriend. Their home was a rundown flat on a council estate in Stepney; money was very tight.…

A scandal erupted at a fishing tournament in Lake Erie, Ohio, last weekend. At the event, fishermen compete to see who can achieve the best weight for a bucket of five walleye; the prize is nearly $30,000. Suspicions were aroused when Jacob Runyan and Chase Cominsky’s bucket weighed in at more than 15kg, much more than expected, putting them in pole position. Director Jason Fischer cut open the fish and found that they were stuffed with lead weights and fish fillets. Amid shouts of “Call the cops!” and “Check every fish!”, the pair were disqualified – and told to flee for their own safety. An artist has spent two years completely covering his six-bedroom mansion in doodles – and says the end result is “paradise”. Sam Cox, known as Mr…

JAPAN The lessons of a divisive state funeral The Mainichi (Tokyo) It was quite right that the Japanese public were given a chance to mourn Shinzo Abe, says The Mainichi. Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, who retired two years ago, was shot dead in July by a lone assassin while campaigning for his Liberal Democratic Party. But was it right to give him a full state funeral, the first for a former premier in 55 years? Abe was a polarising figure, criticised for downplaying Japanese crimes in the Second World War and for his links with the Unification Church, known as the Moonies. His government was mired in scandals over cronyism and the use of public funds. Even so, PM Fumio Kishida “rammed through” preparations for a ¥1.66bn (£10.1m) state funeral…

“It’s the rueful half-smile that breaks my heart,” said Judith Woods in The Daily Telegraph. Ambushed by a camera-wielding parent outside their home, a younger child would have beamed or scowled. But Molly Russell offers that “oh-go-on-then-if-you-must” expression that “every self-aware teen gives her soppy dad”. It is an “intimation of adulthood” – the willingness to make “brief accommodations” to spare other people’s feelings, and get on with the day. But Molly will not reach adulthood. In November 2017, the 14-year-old was found dead in her bedroom, having spent months viewing online content linked to depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide. Some of it romanticised self-harm. Much of it was so graphic, bleak and violent that a psychiatrist told the inquest into Molly’s death that he’d been “unable to sleep well”…

By any measure, Yalemzerf Yehualaw’s victory in Sunday’s London Marathon was sensational, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. Competing in only her second marathon, the 23-year-old Ethiopian runner became the youngest female winner of the race, and did so in the third-fastest time recorded by a woman on the course: 2hrs 17mins 26secs. What made her feat even more remarkable was that with six miles to go, she failed to notice a speed bump – and fell heavily on the tarmac. This was no minor fall, said Jim White in The Daily Telegraph. Yehualaw “went flying, splatting onto the road in a comic-book spreadeagle”. It would have seriously slowed down most runners, yet it appeared to have the opposite effect on Yehualaw. Picking herself up, she immediately resumed running and…

Olivier, National Theatre, London SE1 (020-3989 5455). Until 5 November Running time: 2hrs 50mins A key requirement for any revival of The Crucible is that it “doesn’t feel too much like a lecture in disguise”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Famously, Arthur Miller wrote his 1953 play – about the “juvenile-led spasm of denunciation and execution” that seized Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-3 – as a “chilling quasi-allegory” for McCarthyite anticommunism. Lyndsey Turner’s “gripping” production “magnificently” passes that test – providing drama without didacticism. And even if the director doesn’t quite “reinvent” the piece, she thoroughly “refreshes it, honouring the specificity but banishing clutter”, and creating an “awe-inspiring monumentalism”. This is “the National at its best”. It’s a “masterly” production, agreed Theo Bosanquet on What’s on Stage – brilliantly…

For me, Sky Atlantic’s This England turned out to be “a drama of two halves”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. “There was the half that I very much wanted to watch, namely Kenneth Branagh’s barrelling, air-punching, at times uncanny Boris Johnson impression.” And there was “the other half” that, shamefully, I didn’t want to watch: “namely the forensic retelling of Britain’s Covid-19 hellscape”. Co-written and co-directed by Michael Winterbottom, the series covers the first few months of the pandemic, and skilfully interweaves the parallel narratives of Covid approaching “like a bullet train”, and Johnson’s tangled domestic life. The result is “gruelling”, yet mesmerising I was not mesmerised, said Christopher Stevens in the Daily Mail. Branagh’s Johnson is a caricature in a fat-suit, “with a Classical misquote for every occasion”…

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse, 1938 (Cornerstone £8.99). I’ve chosen this as it’s probably my favourite Wodehouse, but really I can’t bear to pick one. Every individual page of his books has more jokes on it than many other comic novels have on all of theirs combined. Incidentally, I always imagine these books being read to me in the voice of Hugh Laurie. I have told him this and he was very gracious about it. Didn’t even float the idea of a restraining order. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, 1932 (Penguin £9.99). I reread Gibbons’ first and best known novel very frequently, as it is a completely happy place for me. The tone is perfect, and it’s such a subtle satire than you almost don’t realise…

Programmes Raising the Mary Rose: The Lost Tapes Forty years after Henry VIII’s flagship was raised from the seabed, this documentary uses archive footage to revisit the project and the teams behind it. Sun 9 Oct, C4 19:00 (60mins). Children of the Caribbean Revolution with Lindsay Johns To mark Black History Month, the writer and broadcaster tells the stories of four inspirational Caribbean leaders, from the 17th century to the 1980s. Sun 9 Oct, BBC4 22:00 (60mins). Trump: The Comeback? On the eve of the midterm elections, Katty Kay goes across the US to gauge the likelihood of Trump’s return to the White House. Tue 11 Oct, BBC2 23:15 (60mins). The Elon Musk Show Via interviews with family, employees, friends and foes, this documentary attempts to uncover the real person…

Castaway Modernism, at Kunstmuseum Basel, features works by artists including Picasso and Chagall that were labelled as degenerate by the Nazis in 1937, and removed from German museums (22 Oct-19 Feb 2023; £23; kunstmuseumbasel.ch). The Idols & Rivals exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna gathers works by the likes of Michelangelo and Tintoretto to show how great artists have always competed with one another (until 8 Jan 2023; £18; khm.at). Henri Matisse’s masterpiece, L’Atelier Rouge (1911) forms the backbone of Matisse: The Red Studio at the State Museum of Art in Copenhagen, which is known for its exceptional collection of his work (13 Oct-26 Feb 2023; £14; smk.dk). Paris’s Musée de l’Homme plays host to Arts et Préhistoire, with works from the 400th to 150th centuries BC combined with…

A giant rainforest in the Caribbean Travel to Guyana will get easier in March, when BA launches direct flights from Gatwick to the South American nation’s capital, Georgetown. This former British colony offers a different perspective on the Caribbean, says Chris Moss in The Daily Telegraph. “Sure, there’s cricket, rum and Red Stripe”, just as there is in the islands to its north; and Georgetown has a splendid old Anglican cathedral. But south of the city lies a region of pristine rainforest as large as the UK, which is home to more than 900 bird species, as well as tapir, giant otter, jaguar, armadillos and more. Immense tabletop mountains dominate the western border with Venezuela, and the 226m-high Kaieteur Falls is a jaw-dropping sight. The best wilderness lodges include Iwokrama,…

John McVicar 1940-2022 John McVicar, who has died aged 82, was an armed robber who became Scotland Yard’s Public Enemy No. 1 after breaking out from Durham prison in 1968. He’d escaped from Parkhurst two years earlier, and had been put in the “escape proof” E wing. But McVicar had not been deterred, said The Times. With two accomplices, he’d chipped away at a wall in a shower block, replacing the bricks with papier-mâché replicas, then fled down a ventilator shaft. His conspirators were caught, but McVicar remained at large for two years, occasionally making headlines by – for instance – cheekily writing to the home secretary to complain that he was being victimised by the police. His luck ran out in 1970, when he was found living under an…

Gilt yields rose to highs not seen in more than a decade after the mini-Budget triggered “a historic sell-off” of government bonds, said Lauren Almeida in The Daily Telegraph. Bad news for borrowers, great for savers of a certain age. After years of mouldering on the sidelines because of ultra-low interest rates, the bond rout has transformed the outlook for annuities – contracts that promise to pay a regular income from your pension pot. “Savers who lock in an annuity rate today can earn tens of thousands of pounds more over their retirement than those who bought the best deals just a year ago.” According to Canada Life, average annuity rates have increased by 52% in the past nine months, to “a 14-year high”, said Sonia Rach in the Financial…

The week’s best shares AstraZeneca The Times The oncology, biopharma and rare diseases drug-developer has 13 blockbuster drugs that generate $1bn a year. Two face patent expiry in 2025, but AZ has a meaty pipeline and is expanding in China. Buy. £100.76. CVS Group Investors’ Chronicle Pet lovers are keeping margins strong at the vet group, which has 500 surgeries and is focused on staff retention amid sector-wide shortages. Cash-generation, revenue and profits are growing. Buy. £16.16. Finsbury Food Group The Mail on Sunday Finsbury makes supermarket cakes for brands including Thorntons and Mary Berry. Margins have been squeezed, but it is managing inflationary pressures well, and gluten-free recipes have boosted demand. Yields 3%. Buy. 79p. Kape Technologies The Sunday Times A surge in digital data hacks and other cybersecurity…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1332 An Ettinger pass holder and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 17 October. Send it to The Week Crossword 1332, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass holder in assorted colours, which retails at £115, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 It could bring about woe with stuttering (6,7) 8 Knowledge of a Head about town in Herts (9) 9 Mount is first for Chelsea member (5) 11 Accident with second tablet (5) 12 Rush to get healthy plant (9) 13 See danger all over…

What happened Ukrainian troops have retaken territory in the regions that were illegally annexed by Russia last week. Having reclaimed the strategically important eastern city of Lyman, which had been occupied for four months, Kyiv this week began moving reinforcements including armoured vehicles towards Lysychansk, the focus of its eastern counteroffensive. Ukrainian forces also made some of their most significant gains to date in the south of the country. Moscow admitted that in Kherson province its forces were retreating from front-line positions, having lost swathes of territory in the area. At a ceremony in the Kremlin last Friday, Vladimir Putin had given a speech brimming with anti-Western sentiment in which he formally announced the annexation of Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk and Luhansk. Together these make up 15% of Ukraine’s territory. Kyiv…

British Airways has announced that it will review its uniform policy in light of a rival airline’s decision to allow male pilots and crew to wear skirts. Last month, Virgin Atlantic said it was scrapping its rules requiring staff to wear “gendered uniform options”, because it wanted them to be able to “express their true identity” at work. BA’s review follows its decision to drop references to “ladies and gentlemen” from its in-flight announcements. A third of scientists working in artificial intelligence believe that AI systems could cause “a catastrophe this century that is at least as bad as an all-out nuclear war”, a poll has revealed. Nearly three-quarters think AI could lead to societal change on the scale of the Industrial Revolution.…

The public inquiry into Britain’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic got under way in London this week. On its opening day, its chair, former Court of Appeal judge Baroness Hallett, promised that the bereaved would be at the “heart” of the inquiry, although they are not being invited to testify to it. Instead, there will be a separate “listening exercise” to capture their views. Were the bereaved to be consulted at every stage, she added, the inquiry could “go on forever”. It will start by looking into the UK’s preparedness for a coronavirus pandemic; it will then scrutinise decisions taken by leaders, and examine the impact of Covid on healthcare systems, patients and staff.…

Florida Hurricane devastation: Rescue workers in Florida and South Carolina were searching for survivors of Hurricane Ian this week, as the death toll continued to mount. At least 100 people are believed to have died, and officials are facing growing criticism for not giving residents of the worst hit areas more warning of the impending Category 4 hurricane, which hit Florida, before making a second landfall in South Carolina. More than 300,000 homes and businesses in Florida remained without power this week; analysts have warned that the damage could run to tens of billions. Ian had earlier caused extensive damage in Cuba; and 16 Cuban migrants on a boat that capsized off the coast of Florida were still missing this week. President Biden was due to arrive in Florida on…

1 Lose Yourself by Marshall Mathers, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto, performed by Eminem 2 Gule Sori, written and performed by Farhad Darya 3 Eye of the Tiger by Frankie Sullivan and Jim Peterik, performed by Survivor 4 Never Enough by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, performed by Loren Allred 5 Home by Michael Bublé, Alan Chang and Amy S. Foster, performed by Michael Bublé 6* Fly by Jean-Jaques Goldman and Phil Gladston, performed by Celine Dion 7 Are You Ready for Love by Leroy Bell, Thom Bell and Casey James, performed by Elton John 8 Everything I Wanted by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, performed Billie Eilish Book: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by Bryan Mealer and William Kamkwamba Luxury: pen and paper * Choice if allowed only one record…

As dentists’ appointments become harder to find, gory stories of “DIY dentistry” have become ever more common. Over-the-counter kits intended as temporary remedies for lost fillings, caps and crowns are being used as permanent solutions. Healthwatch England has warned that patients are using metal nail files in an attempt to level sharp edges and buying dental cement online to glue back missing teeth. Some even pull out their own teeth in desperation. One patient told the BBC she had removed 11 of her own teeth; another removed six after waiting four years for an appointment. In 2020 – when the problem was worse because of Covid – a poll for the Association of Dental Groups found that 25% of households across the UK had attempted some form of DIY dentistry:…

How Princeton defied the laws of nature Malcolm Gladwell Bulletin For centuries, inventors have sought to defy the laws of thermodynamics by creating a perpetual motion machine – an apparatus that can run forever without any external power source. Now, at last, we have one, says Malcolm Gladwell. “It’s called Princeton University.” As far as funding goes, this institution has reached the “holy grail” of self-sufficiency. After a bumper year in 2021, the value of its endowment now sits at $37.7bn. Over the past 20 years, the average annual return on that endowment has been 11.2%. Even if Princeton can only manage a return of 10% in future, that will give it some $3.77bn a year in interest, which is more than double its annual operating cost of $1.86bn. The…

Nurses are leaving the NHS in “staggering” numbers, a new report has warned. More than 40,000 have quit the NHS in England in the past year – one in nine of the workforce, according to the Nuffield Trust think tank’s analysis for the BBC. The report warns that many of those leaving are highly skilled and experienced – and that the number of departing nurses is almost cancelling out the rise in new recruits. In the year to June, there were only 4,000 more joiners than leavers. The Government has set itself a target of increasing the number of nurses working for NHS England by 50,000 by the end of this Parliament. Dr Billy Palmer, from the Nuffield Trust, said that the exodus was the result of “deep-rooted issues with…

Keir Starmer is “a very methodical person”, said Martin Kettle in The Guardian. As a lawyer, his successes weren’t built on “dazzling courtroom displays”. He would patiently prepare a case that allowed him “to seize the advantage when the right time came”. He has adopted the same approach to politics, and it’s now paying off. With Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget meltdown providing a perfect illustration of the shortcomings of “surface cleverness” in politics, Starmer’s steady, unflashy style has never looked more attractive. And thanks to his work as party leader since 2020, Labour has never looked more electable. He has firmly turned the page on the Corbyn era, and dragged Labour back towards the centre. With one recent poll putting the party 33 points ahead of the Tories, it looks like…

“The trouble with being punctual is that nobody is there to appreciate it.”Franklin Jones, quoted in The Knowledge “Youth is a disease from which we all recover.”Dorothy Fuldheim, quoted in the Herald Sun “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”Pablo Picasso, quoted in the Catholic Register “It is easy to display a wound… It is hard to show a pimple.”Leonard Cohen, quoted on Quartz “I have two acting styles: with and without a horse.”Robert Mitchum, quoted in Slant magazine “I can think of a more probable alternative universe than the one we’re in.”Joyce Carol Oates, quoted on Bustle “Old people should only talk about their symptoms to other old people.”Joan Bakewell in The Times “A good scare is worth more to a man…

To the Financial Times It is difficult to find an article that in any way supports Kwasi Kwarteng’s decision to take a bold step to move the UK economy onto a path of sustainable growth rather than to follow the orthodoxy of wealth redistribution and an inevitable steady decline. This approach surely deserves some column inches as to why it could well be successful, given that the country’s debts are denominated in sterling and can therefore be serviced, that the Bank of England shows no indication that it is going to monetise the debt, and that the ratio of our debt to GDP is better than many. I would hope that a budget that is about structural reform to improve the supply side of the economy would be given some…

This year marks the centenary of Lucian Freud’s birth – and London’s galleries aren’t about to let us forget it, said Laura Freeman in The Times. This autumn, “you can’t move for Freud books and shows”. Exhibitions devoted to the painter, who died in 2011, are taking place at the Freud Museum, the Garden Museum and at no less than four commercial galleries; meanwhile, a collection of the artist’s letters and a “massive” coffee-table book are being published. Yet any feelings of Freud fatigue will be dispelled by this “stunning show” at the National Gallery, which effortlessly demonstrates why we so venerate this most difficult but “brilliant” of painters. Entitled New Perspectives, the exhibition brings together more than 60 paintings created over the course of Freud’s seven-decade career in an…

Is the Sunday roast under threat? British households are making “big changes in the kitchen”, in response to rising food and energy costs, says Zoe Wood in The Observer. According to the BBC’s Good Food Nation report, people are eating more frozen food, buying food that’s quicker to prepare, cutting down on takeaways, and making more use of their microwaves. They are also buying fewer expensive ingredients, with red meat, cream and butter (all subject to recent price hikes) among the leading casualties. The survey also revealed that the cost-of-living crisis is threatening the traditional Sunday lunch: a quarter of the 3,000 respondents to the survey said they were cooking fewer roast meals, both to avoid having to buy the ingredients, and to cut down on oven use. Nearly a…

SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH…

Norway’s Northern Lights Admire Norway’s glaciated coastline and seaside cities during 12 nights aboard Cunard’s Queen Mary II, from £1,329pp all incl. 0808-239 2428, cruise118.com. Depart Southampton 1 November Plush pod in Perthshire Spend 2 nights glamping in the idyllic Scottish countryside, with optional use of a hot tub and pizza oven. Pod from £185pp self-catered. 01444-676015, campsites.co.uk. Arrive 28 November Sea and spa in the Canaries Grab some winter sun with 6 nights at the Bohemia Suites & Spa in Gran Canaria, a stone’s throw from the beach. From £528pp self-catered, flights excl. 0843-508 4189, destinia.com. Arrive 11 December. Two nights in Bruges Step out of the luxury Hotel De Orangerie and into the annual Winter Glow festival for Christmas markets and more. £412 b&b, Manchester flights incl. 0800-319…

Porsche: below water Volkswagen “defied a global economic slowdown and febrile markets to pull off one of Europe’s largest initial public offerings”, said Olaf Storbeck and Peter Campbell in the Financial Times. Shares in Porsche, the luxury sports car marque, majority-owned by VW, climbed last week on their debut in Frankfurt. The €75bn listing, which saw shares open “at the top of the pricing range” (€82.50) marked “a rare bright spot for an IPO market hit by the end of the bull run in equities and an energy crisis in Europe”. It was a triumph on an otherwise “crappy day” for markets, concluded one banker involved in the float. VW, which plans to channel the cash from the sale into its quest to become “a world leader” in electric vehicles,…

A real case of crisis, what crisis? Alex Brummer Daily Mail Late last month, “those doomsters at the Bank of England declared that the economy was in recession”, says Alex Brummer. Cue another bout of overblown pessimism in the media during which, predictably, the pound fell. Yet it turns out that Britain isn’t in recession at all. Official figures last week revealed that, “far from falling in the three months to June, output actually climbed by 0.2%” – in spite of spiralling energy prices, rampant inflation and efforts by “Cassandras to paint the UK as an economic basket case”. Meanwhile, inflation in the eurozone, at 10%, is now “a fraction higher” than the UK – even before the Government’s multibillion-pound aid package knocks “as much as 5% off the headline…

Svante Pääbo, a Swedish paleogeneticist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, 40 years after his father won the same award. The 67-year-old was honoured for cracking the genetic code of the Neanderthals, among other achievements. He is the eighth Nobel winner with a Nobel-winning parent. Misfiring jokes, after a senior executive at Apple was forced to resign, for claiming that he fondles “big-breasted women” for a living, in a video that went viral. Tony Blevins had been approached in his expensive car by a TikToker who makes a practice of asking people in expensive cars what they do for a living. “I race cars, play golf and fondle big-breasted women,” he replied – a reference to a line in the 1981 film Arthur.…

Three-quarters of UK voters, including 71% of those who voted Tory in 2019, believe Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have “lost control” of the economy. 24% of voters think they are still in control. Opinium/The Observer 81% of UK adults believe that nature is under threat and that more needs to be done to protect it. 48% say they’re willing to take action to reverse the damage. YouGov for the National Trust, RSPB and WWF 65% of UK students believe that free speech and robust debate are well protected by their universities, up from 63% in 2019. Half of students feel that people with conservative views are reluctant to express them at university. KCL/The Guardian…

Tehran Dissent spreads: Anti-government protests sparked by the death of a young woman in the custody of the morality police are still spreading across Iran, the protesters calling for an end to the country’s ultra-conservative religious laws. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tried to quell the rage by describing Mahsa Amini’s death as a “bitter incident” that “deeply broke my heart”. Last week, riot police brutally shut down a student protest in Tehran, using what appeared to be tear gas. More than 30 students were arrested. Ouagadougou Military coup: The troubled west African state of Burkina Faso experienced its second military coup in less than a year last week, when a young army captain declared himself the country’s new leader and declared that the toppled president, Lt Col Paul-Henri…

“‘Have you come far?’ I always thought this question illustrated the banality to which the Queen was condemned by her superficial acquaintance with millions, but it is actually evidence of her subtle brilliance, for it is a version of ‘Where are you from?’ in language designed to avoid offence. That question is frowned on as subtly racist by some. Not asking, though, impoverishes human relations. The journeys people have taken, socially and geographically, are fascinating; to understand them you need to know where they started. ‘Have you come far?’ tactfully invites responses ranging from ‘Victoria on the No. 2 bus’ to ‘From Vladivostok via Inner Mongolia, where I spent 20 years as a cattle-herder.’” Emma Duncan in The Times…

Stripping off in the name of feminism Martha Gill The Observer Amazing how exploitative you can be today in the way you depict women, says Martha Gill, provided you overlay it with a veneer of feminism. In Blonde, Netflix’s new Marilyn Monroe biopic, there’s barely a scene where Monroe isn’t “topless, crying, being raped or having a forced abortion”. No mention of her activism or her success in setting up a production company, just a relentless, lascivious focus on her victimhood. The same goes for Pam & Tommy, the recent film about Pamela Anderson – a welter of titillating imagery all in the cause, you understand, of showing how dreadfully she was treated. Nor is it just movies that engage in this faux feminism. It’s how we “consume our female…

A breakthrough for MND… An experimental treatment for motor neurone disease (MND) has had remarkable results in a Phase 3 trial. MND is caused by the death of the nerves, or motor neurones, that carry messages from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles, and it gradually robs people of their ability to move, swallow, speak and even breathe. Most patients die within two years of being diagnosed. The “gene silencing” treatment is only designed to work on a specific subgroup of patients – the 2% who carry a particular mutation, SOD1, which causes them to produce a toxic protein that kills the motor neurones. But when it was tested on 108 people for the trial, at the University of Sheffield, the results were striking: after a year of…

David Dimbleby spent 25 years chairing Question Time on the BBC, and has interviewed nearly every prime minister in recent history – and yet he insists he has very few friends. “We don’t have people round!” he told Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday Times. “People ask me, ‘Why aren’t you having a launch party [for his new memoir]?’ I say, because I don’t know anybody. I don’t know who to ask. They say, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, David, you know everybody.’ But I actually don’t know anybody.” Why not? “I don’t find it easy to talk to people. I’m always tongue-tied. I never know what to say to people. I’m not very good at chat. I’ve got no chat.” Nearly two years after his death, John le Carré has become…

Three years ago, Manchester United came close to agreeing terms with FC Salzburg for the young Norwegian striker Erling Haaland. Although Ole Gunnar Solskjær, United’s then manager, believed he had a deal, the club’s owners blocked the move, and instead the 19-year-old went to Borussia Dortmund. It was a decision that always seemed likely to “come back to haunt United”, said Mark Ogden on ESPN. And at the Etihad last Sunday, “it certainly did”. Playing his first derby for Manchester City – the club he joined over the summer – Haaland rampaged through United’s defence “like a teenager playing against nine-year-olds”. He scored a hat-trick and created two other goals as City thrashed their rivals 6-3 – a scoreline that flattered Erik ten Hag’s side. Combining raw power and pace…

F1 Max Verstappen missed the chance to seal the world title at the Singapore Grand Prix. He finished seventh, with Sergio Pérez taking the flag. Football Bruno Lage has been sacked as head coach of Wolves, after 16 months in charge. The club have won just one of eight matches. Rugby union Saracens achieved their largest-ever victory over Leicester Tigers, winning 51-18 to go top of the Premiership. Tennis Novak Djokovic won the Tel Aviv Open, beating Marin Čilič 6-3, 6-4 in the final.…

A plinth fit for a Queen? The campaign to install a permanent statue of Queen Elizabeth II on the vacant fourth plinth of London’s Trafalgar Square had seemed to be gathering steam, said Matthew Weaver in The Guardian. But this week Prue Leith, one of the instigators of the fourth plinth programme, under which a new work of contemporary art is installed on the site every year, spoke out against the idea. The chef and broadcaster said that the plinth would not be prominent or “special enough” for the Queen; she suggests installing a statue outside Westminster Abbey instead. Echoing Leith’s call is the Malawian artist Samson Kambalu, whose work Antelope was unveiled on the plinth last week, said David Sanderson in The Times. His sculpture depicts John Chilembwe, a…

Jolene reads Kenton’s old diary and becomes engrossed in his teen romances. Ben’s in bed, pretending to Josh he’s sick. Later, he meets Chelsea and they awkwardly discuss the situation; Ben realises he’ll have to confess to Beth. Later, he breaks down and tells Josh everything. George convinces Eddie to let him in on the turkey business, for a cut of profits. Ruth is baffled by Ben’s lack of enthusiasm when Vince offers him a trip to New Zealand with Beth. Ben tries to get out of it, but to no avail. Beth gets back from Magaluf and thinks Ben is acting weirdly. He eventually confesses all about Chelsea and the pregnancy, and, distressed, Beth leaves. Alan’s worried that Peggy’s church window is a vanity project. Kenton’s diary reveals a…

• Evernote is a cross-platform tool that is great for collecting notes, PDFs, scans and audio recordings in one place. It works on almost any device and is free for up to two devices, with 60MB of monthly uploads. Evernote personal costs £5.99/month, and students can get 40% off Evernote professional, which costs £7.49/month. • Microsoft’s OneNote is a good alternative with similar features. You can divide your notes into sections and pages, and annotate them using a range of mark-up tools. It’s free to use, but the notes are stored in OneDrive – which comes free with a Microsoft account with 5GB of space. Extra storage costs £1.99/month for 100GB. • Apple’s Notes app is particularly good for handwriting notes on an iPad. However, it doesn’t work cross-platform; it…

Coolio 1963-2022 Coolio, who has died aged 59, was one of the most successful West Coast hiphop artists of the 1990s, and did much to bring the genre into the mainstream. He had several hits, including the C U When You Get There, with a melody based on Pachelbel’s Canon, and Rollin’ with My Homies, which featured in the film Clueless; but none matched the success of his ominous yet melancholic megahit Gangsta’s Paradise. Coolio claimed to have written the song at a single sitting, said The New York Times, after hearing Stevie Wonder’s 1976 song Pastime Paradise playing in the studio of his manager’s house in LA. “I sat down and started writing,” he told Rolling Stone. The first words that came to him were based on Psalm 23…

Kwasi Kwarteng One of the Chancellor’s chief calling cards as a rising politician was his deep interest in markets, said the FT. Having written a doctoral thesis on 17th century currency policy at Cambridge, he had a habit of peppering conversations “with historical references to past economic crises”. Now he is in the middle of one of his own making. As a former City analyst, Kwarteng might have “hoped for a more sympathetic hearing” in the Square Mile, said Matthew Lynn in The Sunday Telegraph. “Yet he appears to have badly misjudged” its reaction. A senior UBS economist described the Tories as “a doomsday cult”. Research firm TS Lombard reckons that, thanks to the Chancellor, there’s now a “moron risk premium” to investing in Britain. The Sunday Times reported that…