Table of contents for 1482 in The Week

What happened Seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli air strike on Monday, intensifying international criticism of the country’s military operation in Gaza. Three Britons – James Henderson, 33, John Chapman, 57, and James Kirby, 47 – were among those killed when a clearly marked three-car convoy of volunteers, from the charity World Central Kitchen, was hit three times as it travelled through a “deconflicted zone”. The other four victims were Australian, Polish, Palestinian and US-Canadian. The charity said the convoy was returning from dropping 100 tonnes of food at a warehouse in central Gaza when it was struck. President Biden said he was “outraged” by the deaths; Rishi Sunak told Benjamin Netanyahu that the situation in Gaza was “increasingly intolerable”. The Israeli PM promised an investigation into the…

Adidas, which had to ban German football kits customised with the number 44, after historians and others noticed that the figures resembled the symbol used by Nazi SS units. Nationwide, which was ordered to withdraw its TV ads starring Dominic West as a sneering bank manager. The Advertising Standards Authority said the ads implied that the building society has not closed branches (unlike the big banks); in fact it has. Muji, the Japanese clothing and homeware retailer, which said it was appointing administrators for its European arm.…

Paris School security: The French education minister, Nicole Belloubet, has announced the creation of a “mobile force” to deal with the dangers posed to school staff and pupils by religiously radicalised students. The team, initially to be composed of about 20 National Education agents, will attempt to secure the physical, digital and legal security of schools considered to be under threat. The initiative was triggered by an incident that has sent shockwaves across France: the death threats levelled at the headteacher of Paris’s Maurice-Ravel high school who was falsely accused of striking a female student who had refused to take off her hijab (see page 16). He has since resigned. There have been an increasing number of violent incidents in French schools ever since geography teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded…

1 Life on Mars?, written and performed by David Bowie 2 Dance of the Knights (from Romeo and Juliet) by Sergei Prokofiev, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy 3 Paint it Black by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, performed by The Rolling Stones 4 Dreams by Stevie Nicks, performed by Fleetwood Mac 5 Puttin’ On the Ritz (from Young Frankenstein) by Irving Berlin, performed by Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle 6* All of Me by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons, performed by Louis Armstrong 7 That’s Entertainment by Paul Weller, performed by The Jam 8 In the Ghetto by Mac Davis, performed by Elvis Presley Book: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Luxury: a fermenting set * Choice if allowed only one record…

Claude Monet (1840-1926), the eldest son of a grocer from Le Havre, was the founder and leader of the impressionists. He encouraged his peers to abandon the studio and paint en plein air, in front of the motif, or subject – haystacks, poplars, the water lily pond at his home in Giverny, Rouen Cathedral – and to paint at speed in order to capture l’effet: the particular light conditions. One of his first impressionist works, from 1870, of his wife Camille on the beach at Trouville, has grains of sand embedded in it. He had a boat fitted out so that he could paint on the Seine. Manet visited him in 1874 and, impressed, painted him at work in his boat. There is, though, an element of mythologisation in all…

Right-minded billionaires are revolting Brad Stone Bloomberg Businessweek Silicon Valley used to be a Democratic bastion. Not any more, says Brad Stone. Now it’s home to a chorus of Trump-friendly billionaires – Elon Musk, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, hedge fund boss Ken Griffin, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and many others – all vocal in their efforts to stifle Joe Biden’s re-election prospects. Which is odd, given they’ve seen their wealth “grow propitiously in the past few years”. So what explains this “revolt of the winners”? Partly, it’s fear that a re-elected Biden “might be coming for their wealth”: in last month’s State of the Union address, he called for a 25% billionaire tax on the assets of anyone worth more than $100m, and a rise in corporate interest tax rates…

Within a few decades, the world’s population is expected to start falling for the first time since the Black Death. An analysis of 204 countries has concluded that owing to declining fertility rates, the global population’s growth is starting to slow – and that in the latter part of this century, it will start falling. A rate of 2.1 births per woman over her lifetime is required to maintain population levels. In 1950, the figure stood at 4.84 globally, but by 2021 it had fallen to 2.23, says the report in The Lancet. This downward trend is expected to continue, meaning that by 2050, 75% of countries will have shrinking populations, and by 2100, 97% will. The UK’s fertility rate is 1.49 now. By 2050, it is projected to be…

Angela Rayner unnerves the Tories, said Adam Boulton in The i Paper. In an “otherwise austere Labour leadership team”, the party’s deputy leader stands out for her charisma and remarkable backstory. Raised by an illiterate, disabled mother, she left school at 16, with no qualifications, to care for her own baby, and later worked in social care before becoming a trade union official. Rayner is not some “dismal, hair-shirted, middle-class lefty”. She’s lively, authentic and “unembarrassedly aspirational”. When the then deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, mocked her in the Commons as a “champagne socialist” for accepting an invitation to Glyndebourne, she retorted that The Marriage of Figaro was “the story of a working-class woman who gets the better of a privileged but dim-witted villain”. No wonder Tory critics are so…

“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”Attrib. Gary Shilling, quoted on Morningstar “Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.”Warren Buffett, quoted in the Financial Times “Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.”Zsa Zsa Gabor, quoted on The Conversation “I always take my wife her morning tea in my pyjamas. But is she grateful? No. She’d rather have it in a cup.”Eric Morecambe, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “The English are like their own beer: the dregs are at the bottom, the top is nothing but froth, but the middle is quite excellent.”Voltaire, quoted in The Knowledge “Beauty and the devil are the same thing.”Robert Mapplethorpe, quoted on Luxferity “Indolence is a delightful…

To The Daily Telegraph I agree with Ben Wallace that allowing bearded personnel in the Army will not be the answer to the recruiting problem. The idea that anyone seeking a military career would be put off by a prohibition on beards is ridiculous, save for certain religious minorities. The answer more likely lies within the privatisation of recruitment, and the delays in the approval process. How much better it was when there were recruitment offices on high streets across the country. Then, a young person could call in, talk to a serving sergeant, sign up, and proceed at once to the military life. The issues relating to health and so on were dealt with later, for the bearded, mustachioed or fully shaven. Jonathan Fogg, Portugal To The Daily Telegraph…

by Derek Gow Chelsea Green 256pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 The farmer and rewilder Derek Gow describes “what happened to the wolves of Britain” in this brilliant book, said Horatio Clare in The Daily Telegraph. The story it tells is “sad and violent”: in essence, it’s a history of “extermination”. Frightened of wolves, and “murderously protective” of their livestock, the peoples of Britain, from the Anglo-Saxons on, set about relentlessly eradicating them. According to Gow, wolves are basically friendly to humans: they’re shy, curious and affectionate. But his narrative is packed with accounts of them being “speared, poisoned, trapped, hunted with dogs, tricked into pits and tortured”. Serious as his argument is, his book is “never dull or worthy”: reading it is “like being in the company of a…

Franco Fontana at Atlas Gallery Franco Fontana (b.1933) belongs to a school of photography that prides itself on transforming the mundane into something wonderfully unknowable. Cropping images to focus on specific details – particularly in terms of texture and colour – he plays around with any perspective we might intuit from his original image. Recognisable elements – a tree, or a washing line – are curtailed at the fringes, becoming compositional support acts to the wider, painterly ensemble. This show, Urbani, is focused on his urban photography, and brings together around 20 images taken since 1990, many created with specific reference to 20th century painting: Los Angeles, Mondrian, a shot of a California skyline taking in vividly coloured apartment buildings, justifies its subtitle; and a ground-level gaze up to sun-bleached…

A simple trick for a tasty dinner Paillard is the French word for a piece of meat that is pounded flat and then fried. It is “not a verb”, say Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich in the FT. “But we’d argue that it should be”, and if you “learn to paillard well”, a host of quick and delicious dinner options opens up. The basic process is always the same. Flatten the meat (which could be chicken breast, veal loin, beef or pork) with a mallet or rolling pin until it is “just shy of 1cm thick”. Leave it for half-an-hour in a “simple but assertive marinade” – typically a good oil and something acidic – and then “scorch in a fiercely hot pan for a minute or two on each…

● If your floor is cold, the simplest fix is a robust, washable rug (see weavergreen.com) or try Floorpops – self-adhesive vinyl tiles (£16/pack, dunelm.com) or Ca’ Pietra’s Minérale range (capietra.com). ● If the curtains are getting mouldy, use window film for privacy instead. Try purlfrost.com or Dunelm’s StickSHADE, which is mirrored to conserve heat. ● Remove mildew from a shower curtain with elbow grease and a paste of lemon and salt, or white vinegar, or buy Astonish Specialist Mould Blast Stain Remover. Grout can be cleaned with a toothbrush or a steam mop. For unclogging a shower drain, try the Drain Weasel (£10; therange.co.uk). ● Dark wall colours can make a small bathroom cosy. GrafClean paint has antimould properties (graphenstone-ecopaints.store). Or try a large-print wallpaper sealed with clear matt…

Richard Taylor OBE 1948-2024 Richard Taylor, who has died aged 75, spent 20 years ensuring that something positive came from the senseless killing of his ten-year-old son Damilola. Visiting the concrete stairwell in Peckham, south London, where Damilola had bled to death in November 2000 after being stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle, Taylor “shook with grief”, said The Guardian. He and his wife Gloria worked with the police for six years to identify their son’s killers and bring them to justice. But the couple also campaigned tirelessly to highlight the “impoverishment, disadvantage and fear” that drive many youngsters into a life of violence. Richard visited schools to talk about the devastating impact of knife crime, said The Times. He liaised with other victims, including the family of…

In his history of McKinsey, Duff McDonald described the consultancy as “maybe the single greatest legitimiser of mass layoffs [of] anyone, anywhere, at any time in modern history”. Yet when it comes to McKinsey’s own senior employees, it seems to be a different story, said Laith Al-Khalaf in The Sunday Times. In an effort to cushion underperforming managers, McKinsey is offering to retain UK staffers on full pay for nine months while they look for work elsewhere. Rather than working on client accounts, they will be formally “on search” – receiving “career coaching” and “help with administrative matters” such as updating CVs. What we’re seeing is the fallout from a sector-wide downturn, which has forced McKinsey and almost all its competitors to cut jobs. Last year, the firm embarked on…

“Billionaires are getting richer by the day,” said Lucy Burton in The Daily Telegraph – at least according to Forbes’ latest annual ranking. Here are some highlights from the data: ● A record 2,781 people have fortunes above $1bn – worth a collective $14.2trn. Between them, they gained around $2trn in 2023. ● LVMH boss Bernard Arnault topped the list for a second year running. The French luxury goods magnate’s fortune is estimated at $233bn. Tesla’s Elon Musk was second ($195bn), followed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($194bn) and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($177bn). ● There were 265 newcomers, including pop star Taylor Swift, fashion designer Christian Louboutin, and Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT. ● “There appears to be a new class system emerging even within…

Daniel Kahneman The Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, who has died aged 90, was “an accidental invader of economics”, whose insights “changed the discipline for ever”, said Martin Sandbu in the FT. With his collaborator, Amos Tversky (who died in 1996), he showed that “humans faced with uncertain situations tend to make judgements and take decisions based on systemic biases”, thereby upending the theory of “rational decision-making” that had been fundamental to economics, and creating a new strand of the science: behavioural economics. Kahneman “put a bomb under classical economics”, said The Daily Telegraph. But to the non-specialist he was best known for his 2011 bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow. He also had interesting things to say about Brexit – observing that arguments for exit were clearly emotional… “short-term and based on…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1408 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 15 April. Send it to The Week Crossword 1408, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items including a notebook, coffee mug and tote bag, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Not how minister should informally be welcomed in speech! (4,6) 6 One helps to make lunch efficiently? (4) 9 One associated with Italian city and love (5) 10 One’s strong point is catching fish? That’s lucky (9) 12 What operation with needle can give is continuous…

What happened The future of Britain’s largest water utility is hanging in the balance following a breakdown in talks with the industry regulator, Ofwat. For months, Thames Water’s shareholders have been pushing, without success, for concessions in return for pumping more money into the debt-laden company. They want Thames to be allowed to increase bills by 56% by 2030 and pay lower environmental fines. Last week, they pulled the plug on a pledge to provide an initial cash bailout of £500m by the end of March, saying Ofwat’s intransigence had made Thames Water “uninvestable”. The move came a day after England’s water companies came under fire for record sewage discharges into rivers and coasts, which more than doubled last year compared with the year before. The pollution issue was highlighted…

More than a decade after a New York-based pastry chef caused a sensation with the cronut – a croissant-donut hybrid – and following the success of the cruffin, le crookie has been going viral on TikTok. A croissant filled with gooey cookie dough, it was launched at Boulangerie Louvard in Paris, and is now being sold by bakeries across the city and beyond. But according to The Guardian, le crookie’s time in the sun may be brief: the pain au chocolate/brownie is predicted to be the next TikTok-fuelled hybrid snack hit. As it seeks to boost recruitment, the Army has overturned its century-old ban on beards. A survey of serving troops and reservists had shown that an “overwhelming majority” backed the change.…

Legislation tabled at Holyrood last week could make Scotland the first part of the UK to allow assisted dying for the terminally ill. The private members’ bill, tabled by Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur, would give mentally competent people over 16 who have been diagnosed with a terminal condition the right to end their life. They would have to have lived in Scotland for at least a year, and would have to administer the life-ending medication themselves. The bill includes various safeguards, including the need for independent assessment by two doctors. MSPs are expected to be allowed to vote according to their consciences, following a debate that is likely to take place in the autumn.…

New York Shares plunge: Donald Trump’s net worth fell by more than $1bn on Monday, owing to a plunge in the value of his shares in his Truth Social platform. In the days after the firm debuted on the New York Stock Exchange last week, it was valued at up to $11bn, making Trump’s 60% stake worth more than $6bn at the peak. But analysts warned that the share price owed more to enthusiasm for Trump’s politics than to the company’s financial strength; and sure enough, Truth Social disclosed on Monday that it had lost $58m last year, while generating just $4.1m in revenue, sending its shares plummeting. As Trump’s legal bills mount, he may need some of the wealth tied up in Truth Social. He has managed to secure…

“Grown-up Harry Potter fans are everywhere – loud, proud, and inexplicably eager to tell you that they’re a Ravenclaw. What makes Potter so worth clinging to? No other children’s books inspire the same fanaticism. There aren’t 40-year-old accountants walking around advertising their love of Dick King-Smith, or arguing over which member of the Famous Five they most embody. I can already hear the ‘let people enjoy things’ brigade accusing me of snobbery and elitism. But people enjoy eating whole sticks of butter, or participating in cheese-rolling competitions. That doesn’t mean they should be encouraged.” Louis Chilton in The Independent…

Why we’ve lost our belief in politics Andy Beckett The Observer A mood of feverish anticipation usually accompanies the dying days of long-serving administrations in Britain, says Andy Beckett. Not this time, though. Voters may be sick of the Tories, but they’re far from enthused about Labour taking over. Keir Starmer looks set to become PM “with his personal ratings firmly negative and trending downwards”. Why the lack of excitement? Partly it’s down to a dearth of eye-catching policies and personalities, but it also stems from a wider disconnect between the two main parties and their supporters. Research into the underlying attitudes of Tory voters suggests many feel alienated from the party’s embrace of deregulated capitalism. They hanker for the “more ordered, less permissive” society that preceded Margaret Thatcher’s revolution.…

A xenotransplant breakthrough Doctors in the US have performed the first successful transplant of a genetically modified pig kidney. Richard Slayman, a 62-year-old with end-stage kidney disease, received the xenotransplant during a fourhour operation at Massachusetts General Hospital on 16 March. The new kidney began producing urine shortly afterwards and Slayman has since been able to stop dialysis. Kidneys are the most sought-after transplant organ: in the UK, around 5,000 people are waiting for one. One solution to the shortage of donors would be to harvest organs from pigs: they have large litters and their kidneys are similar in size to ours. But the human immune system rejects foreign tissue and pig organs may transmit harmful viruses. To address this, scientists at biotech company eGenesis used Crispr editing to make…

Jonathan Ross has sparked a debate about personal hygiene by revealing that he often goes more than a week without showering. Speaking on the podcast Parenting Hell, the 63-year-old TV presenter said that if he has not been exercising, he sees no need to shower any more often – and his wife, screenwriter Jane Goldman, follows a similar routine. “We’re like a couple of hamsters in their own straw in that bed,” he added. The prop door panel that saved the life of Kate Winslet’s character Rose at the end of Titanic has sold at auction for $719,000. Though Titanic remains one of the most successful films ever made, the prop’s value was no doubt raised by the controversy over whether it was big enough to have also saved her…

“Free speech has been on life support for several years,” said Toby Young in The Scotsman, but this week the Scottish government “finally pulled the plug”. On April Fool’s Day – no joke – the Hate Crime Act came into effect, criminalising the “stirring up of hatred” towards several protected characteristics, including age and transgender identity. In this new Orwellian reality, people in Scotland can head to one of 400 or so “third-party reporting centres” and file an anonymous complaint of a “hate crime” – whether it’s a tweet they found offensive, or a stand-up comedy routine. Any report, “however vexatious”, will be automatically recorded as a “non-crime hate incident”. The law even extends to private conversations, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail, meaning your children could report you…

Arsenal were “depicted as soft” last season, because they faded badly in the final few weeks of the title race, said Henry Winter in The Times. But as became abundantly clear on Sunday, when they travelled to Manchester City, things are different this time round. Mikel Arteta’s side have acquired “a hard streak”. In seven previous visits to the Etihad – where Arteta worked for three-and-a-half years as Pep Guardiola’s assistant – Arsenal had failed to win a point. This time, though, Arteta had a plan: his team would “utterly” frustrate City by “doubling up on Erling Haaland, by dropping deep, by grappling at corners”. The strategy wasn’t pretty, but it worked: Arsenal earned a 0-0 draw against the team who had scored in every one of their previous 57…

Football Ipswich are top of the Championship after beating Southampton 3-2. Manchester City are top of the Women’s Super League after beating Liverpool 4-1. Cricket England’s women’s team beat New Zealand by four wickets in their opening ODI. Amy Jones top-scored for England with 92. Tennis Jannik Sinner beat Grigor Dimitrov 6-3, 6-1 in the final of the Miami Open. Danielle Collins of the US (until this week the world No. 53) became the lowest-ranked champion of the women’s event, beating Elena Rybakina in the final.…

Running time: TBC It pains me to report that in a London theatre, “a work of art is being desecrated”, said Houman Barekat in The New York Times. Opening Night is a stage musical adaptation of John Cassavetes’ “stylish” 1977 film, a psychological drama about a troubled Broadway actress – and it is a travesty. The production, from the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, with songs by Rufus Wainwright, is a confusing, meta-mess that is at points “so schlocky, that it almost feels like a send-up”. Alas, it’s true, said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard. What we have here is a “muddled, self-important, furtively misogynist” production that squanders the talents of all concerned. Wainwright’s first-ever musical score is a lame “hodgepodge of genre pastiche and schoolboy rhyme”, and the…

“Ewan McGregor is that rarest of things,” said Hugo Rifkind in The Times: “a once perfectly acceptable actor who has grown into a brilliant one.” For evidence of that, look no further than A Gentleman in Moscow (Paramount+), based on Amor Towles’ novel, in which he delivers a mesmerising performance as Count Rostov, an aristocrat living through the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. As a Tsarist “big nob”, Rostov ought to have been one of the first “against the wall” – but he has been credited with the authorship of a revolutionary poem. So the Reds don’t kill him, and instead place him under house arrest at Moscow’s “swanky” Metropol Hotel. “For many people, this fall in circumstances would be distressing”, said Terry Ramsey in The Daily Telegraph. “But Rostov…

Robert and Lynda campaign for each other as the cricket club chair. Jolene tells Fallon she can’t help financially if Harrison loses his job; when Kenton questions her, she says they might need the money themselves. George’s videos of Bartleby the pony gain him followers, but Jakob says Bartleby needs expensive medication to survive. Kenton plans an Easter event to cheer up Jolene; she refuses to take part, but relents after a pep talk from Elizabeth. Jolene’s mood swings continue as she bars George and Brad over a minor incident; Kenton tries to calm her. The fallout continues when defiant George makes an insincere apology, offending Jolene again; later, Emma hands in her notice at The Bull. Lynda is appointed cricket club chair. At practice, George mocks the players from…

This potato-less gnocchi is made with that classic combination of spinach and ricotta, says Gennaro Contaldo. It’s extremely simple to prepare, but do remember to squeeze out the excess liquid from the cooked spinach before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients. Served with a tomato sauce, it makes a delicious and hearty meal. Serves 4 250g frozen spinach 1 x 250g tub ricotta 1 egg 40g grated parmesan, plus extra for sprinkling pinch of grated nutmeg sea salt 250g “00” flour, plus extra for dusting For the tomato sauce: 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil 2 garlic cloves, finely sliced 1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes sea salt • First make the tomato sauce. Heat the olive oil in a heavy-based pan over a medium heat and sweat the garlic…

The wood-fired Seaside Sauna Haus, on the beach at Seatown, Dorset, can be booked for exclusive use for groups of up to six (£60/hr; seasidesaunahaus.co.uk). Try a sauna safari on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales. Start at Ty Sawna to warm up after a bracing dip in Oxwich Bay. Head on to the twin Caswell Saunas above Caswell Bay, which have ice-cold water barrels (£15/hr; tysawna.co.uk; caswellsaunas.org). Join the ReWild Swim Club on the edge of a spring-fed lake encircled by oak trees in the Cotswolds. After a dip, pop into the Danish wood-fired sauna on the bank (sauna and swim from £15; rewildswimclub.com). Wildwater Sauna tours the Pembrokeshire coast, setting up at a different beach each month. Its huge picture window frames the sea view (£15/hr; wildwatersauna.com). Enjoy…

Castle Elvira Puglia, Italy Built in the late 19th century, this castellated mansion has recently been restored in superb style and opened as a hotel by its British owners, says Simon Gage in Metro. Set in landscaped grounds near the historic town of Lecce (only ten minutes’ drive from the Adriatic), it has “lavish” but “playful” interiors, featuring an eclectic mix of modern and vintage furnishings and flamboyant contemporary art. There are ten airy rooms spread across the castle and a series of renovated outbuildings; and a swimming pool, a Bechstein grand piano, and a restaurant serving excellent Pugliese home cooking. Doubles from about £425 b&b; castleelvira.com.…

Tesla/BYD: tarnished crown Tesla has reclaimed its crown as “the world’s largest seller of battery electric vehicles” from its Chinese rival BYD after “flagging demand and increasing competition” in the latter’s home market led to a 42% quarterly fall in deliveries, said Gloria Li and Peter Campbell in the Financial Times. The rout comes amid an escalating price war in China, the world’s largest EV market. BYD, which is backed by the US investor Warren Buffett, has slashed the price of almost every model in its line-up since the start of the year, but it still faces big challenges from rivals including Geely and SAIC-GM-Wuling. Tesla might have regained its symbolic crown – something for the company’s more “fanatical bulls” to cling to – but that’s probably the best that…

Don’t max out the minimum wage Emma Duncan The Times Millions of Britons will get a pay rise when the minimum wage rises to £11.44 an hour this week, says Emma Duncan. Given the overall success of the policy, introduced by the Blair government in 1999, this hasn’t attracted much comment; but we shouldn’t forget how much it was once feared, “Conventional economic thinking” had predicted it would lead to “job destruction”. Yet, aside from a surge following the financial crisis, unemployment in the UK has remained low. So in terms of reducing poverty and inequality, the minimum wage has proved “the single most successful economic policy in a generation”. Britain now has “one of the highest minimum wages among rich nations”, overtaking even France. But “this is where I…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares Centamin Investors’ Chronicle The Egyptian miner has completed a cost-cutting programme in time to get “full exposure” to the current gold price highs. Profits are rising, production is climbing, and it’s pursuing a new project in Ivory Coast. Buy. 109p. Chesnara The Times The “closed book” insurance and pensions consolidator is growing via acquisitions, and has a strong balance sheet and pipeline. Improving cash generation supports the 9% yield. Buy. 263p. Heineken The Daily Telegraph The Dutch brewer’s volumes fell after price hikes proved too much for drinkers. But the “brand powerhouse” sells 350 beer types in more than 190 countries. Cost-cutting and digital initiatives should boost margins. Buy. €89.34. Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust The Mail on Sunday Hit hard by widespread…

Visitors are being allowed back to the Farne Islands, in Northumberland, reflecting confidence that a corner has been turned in the bird flu outbreak that forced a ban in July 2022. Thousands of seabirds died, but fatalities last year were half those of the year before. The National Trust said it was closely monitoring the situation but, for now, it was glad to welcome humans back, to join the puffins, kittiwakes, fulmars, guillemots, shags and terns that breed there each year. An RNLI volunteer who has spent 58 years coming to the aid of swimmers on Bournemouth’s beaches has been named as the world’s longest-serving lifeguard by Guinness World Records. Chris Lewis joined the RNLI aged 16, in 1966. He is now 74, but still fighting fit: among other things,…

Dollar billionaires, who are proliferating. According to Forbes’ latest list, there are now a record 2,781 of them, 141 more than last year. New entrants include the pop star Taylor Swift and Sam Altman of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT (see page 36). Tweed suits, with reports that Guy Ritchie’s Netflix caper The Gentlemen is fuelling in interest in traditional country-house wear. Pinterest has reported an uptick in searches for “tweed jacket outfit”, “vintage watches” and “flat caps” in the month since the TV series, filmed on the Badminton Estate, launched. Nicholas Cullinan, who was named as the new director of the British Museum. Formerly head of the National Portrait Gallery, he replaces Hartwig Fischer, who resigned over the museum’s handling of warnings about suspected thefts from its collections. Mohamed…

More than half of Russians (52%) think Kyiv was behind the deadly terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall, Moscow, last month; 27% blame Islamic State; 6% the West. 75% think Vladimir Putin is the “most reliable” or a “completely reliable” source of information on the attack. OpenMinds online poll/Financial Times Of those planning to vote for Reform UK next time, 42% would consider backing Rishi Sunak instead if he took tough action to slash net migration, according to a poll by the Legatum Institute, a pro-Brexit thinktank. But 40% said a pledge to cut net migration to under 100,000 a year would make no difference to their voting intention. The latest YouGov poll put Reform UK on 16%, five points behind the Tories. The Times…

How to be selfish Corinne Maier’s book #MeFirst! has created quite the storm in her native France, says Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph. Part feminist thesis, part self-help manual, it argues that “traditional female qualities” such as empathy are a construct devised to enslave women – but that salvation is at hand, if they can embrace selfishness and stop trying to please others (which includes not giving a damn about their appearance). “Sadly, women aren’t born that way, so it does have to be learnt,” she says. “But if we can forget about the ‘superwoman’ we’ve been bullied into thinking we have to be – at home, with the husband, the kids – and release our inner ‘slackerwoman’…” We’d be happier? “Exactly.” A good place to start, she says,…

A teacher in Texas has changed his name to “Literally Anybody Else”, as he prepares to challenge Donald Trump and Joe Biden for the US presidency. Mr Else (Literally and Anybody are his first names) plans to register as an independent, which requires him to gather 113,151 signatures by 13 May. If he succeeds, he says he hopes that ballot papers will have “Donald Trump, Joe Biden and then Literally Anybody Else right underneath”. Finding a lifeless hedgehog in the road, a quick-thinking animal lover scooped it up, placed it in a box with some food and took it to her local wildlife hospital. There, it was examined by vets, who soon determined that it was not actually an animal, but a fluffy bobble from a hat. “I would have…

VATICAN CITY The Pope has squandered his authority Die Welt (Berlin) There’s no point pretending otherwise, says Lucas Wiegelmann: the papacy of Pope Francis has been an outright failure. It’s not just the many gaffes and missteps he has made since becoming Pope in 2013, the latest being his suggestion that Ukraine “raise the white flag” in its fight against Russia, an intervention that went down well in Moscow but was condemned right across the West. It’s his appalling lack of ambition, his reluctance to stamp his authority. His only reform of any substance in recent years has been to introduce blessings for gay couples – and even that “blew up in his face” when African bishops refused to implement it. Meanwhile, “rebellious” German bishops are simply ignoring his instruction…

Sam Bankman-Fried had hoped to get away without serving much time in jail, said Lionel Laurent on Bloomberg. Although the former “cryptocurrency wunderkind” was convicted last year of one of the biggest financial frauds in US history, his lawyers argued for leniency at his sentencing hearing last week, citing his youth, and characterising him as a brilliant misfit whose altruistic intentions had been misunderstood due to autism and mental illness. But the jury in the case had not bought this defence – that he’d done some bad things in pursuit of doing good ones. They’d heard evidence that Bankman-Fried had set up his crypto exchange FTX with fraud in mind; and then used $8bn of his clients’ money to buy luxury homes and political support, and to make risky investments.…

When the news broke last Friday that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson had been charged with non-recent sexual offences, and had resigned as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the shock in Northern Ireland was palpable, said Freya McClements in The Irish Times. Caller after caller to BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback programme – on air as the story broke – sounded stunned; and not surprisingly, for this was a “political earthquake”. A churchgoing father of two, Donaldson, 61, was at “the apex of his career”. Now, he is facing a criminal trial for rape, gross indecency and indecent assault; and his wife Eleanor, 57, has been charged with aiding and abetting offences relating to the same case. The couple, who both deny wrongdoing, are due to appear in court in Newry on…

For all that it conjures up a certain idea of English jollity, the Boat Race is a “brutally demanding event”, said Simon Briggs in The Daily Telegraph. The course stretches for more than four miles between Putney and Mortlake – making it three times as long as an Olympic rowing course. And in the men’s race on Saturday, its gruelling nature was laid bare, when Cambridge’s stroke-seat pacesetter, Matt Edge, all but collapsed with exhaustion with around four minutes to go. Immediately after the race was over, Edge could be seen “slumped helplessly in his seat, drooling and swaying from side to side” – and he had to be helped from his boat by medics. But remarkably, he still ended up on the winning crew. When he collapsed, Cambridge were…

Wrong about Ukraine To the Financial Times I read with some dismay the letter from Tony Brenton on the Russia-Ukraine War. He was a fine ambassador; but he is seriously misleading your readers. He writes that “countries representing 80% of the world’s population see [the West] as engaged in a vindictive enterprise”. This is mischievous. Most of his 80% are, in fact, two countries: China and India. And even they have not voted with Russia on Ukraine. Together with 33 other states (out of a possible 193), China and India abstained because of their close relations with Russia over many years. He has also got carried away in his remarks on the Israel-Hamas conflict. He describes the “slaughter of civilians in Gaza” as a “much nastier challenge to the international…

Lost and Never Found by Simon Mason, 2024 (riverrun £16.99). I greatly enjoyed this latest novel featuring the double act of the two DI Wilkins, Ryan and Ray. Mason has a keen eye for the underbelly of Oxford life, and this story takes us deeper into it than ever, into the world of the homeless, so prominent a feature of the city. A Northern Wind: Britain 1962-65 by David Kynaston, 2023 (Bloomsbury £14.99). Kynaston continues his magisterial survey of Britain, giving a full and immensely readable portrayal of this country. I loved his account of the grand Sheffield housing developments, which have become such a feature of our social history. I was Sheffield born and these were built after my time, but I spent time exploring them when I was…

Programmes Our Dream Farm with Matt Baker In this new series, seven farmers vie to become tenants on a vacant farm on the National Trust’s Wallington Estate in Northumberland. Sat 6 Apr, C4 20:00 (60mins). When Abba Came to Britain Documentary featuring previously unheard interviews with the Swedish supergroup to tell the story of their 50-year relationship with Britain. Sat 6 Apr, BBC2 21:35 (60mins). The Darkest Days: Israel-Gaza Six Months On BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet counts the human cost on both sides of the conflict, and asks what is needed to bring about peace. Sun 7 Apr, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Meet the Roman Emperor with Mary Beard The classicist reveals what life was like inside the Roman imperial court, visiting ancient sites, including the remains, now underwater, of Claudius’s…

Richard Serra 1938-2024 In 1985, a 120ft-long, 12ft-high leaning wall made of rusting steel was installed in a plaza outside some federal buildings in Manhattan, said The Times. Richard Serra’s publicly funded sculpture had plenty of admirers, but its critics regarded it as the most egregious example of what became known as “turd in the plaza” public art. “Kill Serra” posters appeared in nearby streets, and 1,300 office workers signed a petition demanding that the piece, Tilted Arc, be taken down. They said that it was ugly, blocked the sun and got in the way of pedestrians. Serra argued that his work was site specific – he’d spent two years planning it for this spot – and that to remove it would be effectively to destroy it. Finally, the sculpture…