Table of contents for 1579 in The Week

Controversy of the week Grinding graduates down A political storm is brewing over student loans, said the FT – and you can see why. Today’s graduates not only face higher housing, commuting and childcare costs than previous generations, they’re having to cover these while having 9% of their salary above a certain threshold deducted to repay their student loans. There are five different loan schemes currently in operation; and the five million or so graduates who entered university in England and Wales between 2012 and 2023, and are on the Plan 2 version of the loan, have reason to be particularly unhappy. Whereas the interest rate on other loans is set at the RPI measure of inflation, Plan 2 people are charged RPI plus up to 3%, depending on earnings.…

Apologies, after a Norwegian Olympic biathlete’s public plea for forgiveness from the ex-girlfriend on whom he cheated seemed to fall on deaf ears. After winning a bronze medal on Tuesday, a tearful Sturla Holm Lægreid told the world it was the “worst week of my life”, because his girlfriend of six months, “the love of my life”, had broken up with him over his infidelity. The next day the unnamed ex replied, saying “it is hard to forgive”. Tesco, after shoppers spotted that bilingual signs erected in a branch in Cornwall were in Welsh. A local councillor welcomed the effort at the Helston branch, but suggested that it would be better if the signs could be in Kernewek, the Cornish language. Farmers, with claims the use of appetite-suppressing “skinny jabs”…

A quarter of working-age people say they would run out of money within a month if they lost their jobs. Half say they wouldn’t last more than three months. YouGov/The Times 59% of US adults believe their life will be good in about five years, the lowest measure of optimism since the poll began almost 20 years ago. Only around 48% of Americans are now categorised by Gallup as “thriving” – which means they rate their current life at seven out of ten or higher, and estimate their future life at eight or higher. The Independent/Gallup 29% of clergy could be suffering from depression, a survey of 500 CofE priests has found. Four in ten feel isolated in their ministry. Living Ministry…

Chasing the carrot Francis Rossi has spent six decades leading Status Quo. The band may never have been fashionable, but they have sold more than 118 million albums, and produced a host of singalong classics such as Rockin’ All Over the World and Whatever You Want. As a result, Rossi – who grew up in a working-class Italian family in south London – has millions of loyal fans. Yet at 76, he sometimes wonders why he keeps doing it, says Will Hodgkinson in The Times. Recently, he was asked if he’d like to make a solo album, “and I thought, not really. Get a quarter of a penny for every download… what’s the point?” But then he did some recording, and found that he rather enjoyed it. “I started thinking…

Two German backpackers accidentally gatecrashed a wake in Thailand, having mistaken it for a restaurant. The tourists, who haven’t been named, were spotted entering the private event in Nakhon Si Thammarat and sitting down at a table. “I went over to speak with them, and they asked if the place was a food court,” recalled mourner Charantorn Chaloemkiad. They had followed the smell of cooking. The pair were “mortified”, Chaloemkiad said, and made to leave, but the deceased’s sister invited them to stay and served them iced milk and fried dough sticks. Commemorative coins released by the Royal Australian Mint to mark the centenary of the birth of Queen Elizabeth II have been criticised for their poor resemblance to the late monarch. “Looks like she just ran into a wall,”…

RUSSIA The threat of a new nuclear arms race The Irish Times (Dublin) Last year the Doomsday Clock – an estimate of the risk of nuclear conflict – was set at 89 seconds to midnight. This year the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has reduced it to 85 seconds. New START, the arms-reduction treaty signed in 2010, expired last Thursday, says Denis Staunton, and as a result the world has just become a more dangerous place. Vladimir Putin wanted it extended but Donald Trump wasn’t buying. “If it expires, it expires,” he told The New York Times. “We’ll do a better agreement.” This is foolhardy. New START agreed significant limits: no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads for each side (Russia and the US), no more than 800 strategic launchers……

The comedian Paul Merton has declared that there are limits to what he is prepared to do for a fat fee, reports The Sunday Times. Unlike the likes of Jimmy Carr and Jack Whitehall, for instance, he says he would rather be poorer doing gigs in Leicester than richer in Riyadh. So no, he will not be performing in Saudi Arabia, he added, “and neither am I considering doing warmup for Hitler at Nuremberg”. A Labour peer has sparked outrage among conservationists by attending a meeting about the endangered red squirrel wearing a Dolce & Gabbana outfit decorated with invasive grey squirrels. Baroness Hayman’s dress seemingly went unremarked at the time – the event was last year – but it was spotted by the chairman of a red squirrels charity…

“Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.”George Eliot, quoted in the Financial Times “The art of populism lies in headlines. It is about the way you tell it.”Simon Jenkins in The Guardian “The only electoral advice that matters is ‘pitch to the floating voter’ and ‘choose a good leader’.”Janan Ganesh in the FT “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”Epictetus, quoted on Slate “We may have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”Louis D. Brandeis, quoted on NJToday “If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”Edith Wharton, quoted in The Independent “The real voyage of discovery consists not…

To The Times In 1995, I spent a summer writing science briefings in parliament, and even then was amazed that 650 MPs debated in a chamber with 420 seats, many waiting eagerly for the “reward” of office space. We need a new-build parliament outside London, just as Australia’s parliament was built, far from cities. It should have workspace for parliamentary staff, who often serve far longer than MPs, and must be easy to defend against ground, air or cyberattack. It should also offer flats on site for MPs, to end both the scramble for London accommodation and the expenses system. Colin Treleven, Ludgvan, Cornwall To The Times With repairs to the Palace of Westminster predicted to cost eye-watering sums and take decades, a simpler and cheaper solution should not be…

Mandy, Indiana: Urgh Sacred Bones £15 Mandy, Indiana’s debut album – 2023’s I’ve Seen a Way – introduced a band that straddles the electronic and noise-rock worlds, fronted by an “enigmatic” French vocalist, Valentine Caulfield, said Will Richards in Rolling Stone. On this “outstanding” follow-up, the beats and riffs are even sharper and more focused; the delivery even more ferocious. At times it feels as though there are “five bands at once” – such as when Caulfield “bursts past an ear-splitting barrage of bass to speak her truth with a wildly Auto-Tuned vocal on opener Sevastopol”, or when another track, Magazine, “turns on a sixpence from a wailing noisy rock song into a dirty, thumping techno track”. It’s thrilling. Mandy, Indiana’s music has an “industrial, siren-like intensity”, said Laura Snapes…

A “coming-of-age film” with “inspired” casting, this Nigerian drama is set during that country’s turbulent 1993 presidential election, said Jonathan Romney in the FT. Mainly told over the course of one day, it opens with two boys aged eight and 11 (played by the brothers Godwin Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo) mucking around at home, when their father (Sopé Dìrísù, known for TV’s Slow Horses), whom they barely know, turns up – and to their delight, takes them on a trip to Lagos. The film (in English, Yoruba and pidgin English) “is made in a mode that you might call Hallucinatory Realism: events and images flashing before the camera in the same rush that the boys experience them”. We get a “panorama of 1993 Lagos, but also fleeting, arresting details…

For his next big project, Anish Kapoor plans to send a large sculpture into orbit, as a protest against the commercialisation of space. To ensure that it is visible from Earth, Kapoor says it will be about “the size of a house”, and might have mirrors to help it stand out. He did not reveal who is sponsoring the project, which is likely to cost hundreds of millions, but confirmed that it wasn’t Elon Musk, whose attitude to space he “cannot stand”. The Mumbai-born British artist has made vast pieces before, including a shining steel structure in Chicago – inspired by liquid mercury – known as “the bean”, and the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower in London. The point of the new work will be that it is useless, he told The…

Programmes Yellowjackets Mystery thriller set across two timelines. A high-school football team’s plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness, with profound effects 25 years later. Sun 15 Feb, ITV1 22:15 & 23:20 (65mins and 60mins respectively). The Tony Blair Story: Who Are You? Three-part series charting the story of Blair’s meteoric rise and fall. Tue 17-Thu 19 Feb, C4 9pm (90mins, 90mins and 60mins). Fukushima: Days That Shocked the World On 11 March 2011, Japan was rocked by the most powerful earthquake in the nation’s history. This series talks to survivors and witnesses. Tue 17 & Wed 18 Feb, C4 22:00 and 22:30 (60mins). Storyville: The Darkest Web Documentary following a network of specialist undercover police as they investigate online crime against children. Tue 17 Feb, BBC4 22:00 (90mins). Films Sleepless in…

The first of its kind in Scotland, HotBoat is a wood-fired sauna that floats across Loch Tay. Plunge into the loch if you dare (2 hours for 6 people is £300; taymouthmarina.com). Cradled at the foot of Lulworth Cove in Dorset, Saltwater Sauna has space for eight people; be sure to wade out into the cove’s still water afterwards (from £15 for 65 mins; thesaltwatersauna.com). Aqua Sana has a treetop sauna in the canopy overlooking Sherwood Forest. The fun continues in the forest below, with ice rubs, steam rooms and hot tubs (spa packages from £85; aquasana.co.uk). Set in 200 acres by the River Teifi in Wales, Fforest Farm has a cedar-barrel sauna, cold plunge and wood-fired hot tub (from £40 for 2 hours; coldatnight.co.uk/fforest-farm). Rooftop Saunas now has two sites…

Giraffe Manor Nairobi, Kenya This creeper-clad 1930s mansion on the outskirts of Nairobi is a place of “storybook wonder” thanks to the giraffes that “potter nonchalantly” around its grounds, sometimes poking their heads in at the windows, says Tatler. With its four-poster beds, it’s “very Out of Africa”. And though you’ll feel as though you’re staying in a private country house, it has the luxuries of a five-star hotel, including a gym and an “excellent” spa. Afternoon teas on the front lawn are a delight, with “fabulously chintzy” fine china, and there’s an outdoor pool with “sweeping” forest views. Doubles from about £1,050, full-board; thesafaricollection.com.…

Global Counsel: life after Mandelson? This week, Palantir – the controversial US data analytics company – is to host “a lavish party” in Mayfair “to celebrate the next chapter in our partnership with the Ministry of Defence”. No prizes for guessing the elephant in the room on Wednesday, said Larisa Brown in The Times. Defence Secretary John Healey insists that the decision to award Palantir a £240m contract to “boost military AI and innovation” was his alone, but the Government is under pressure “to review the contract”, signed in December, thanks to Peter Mandelson’s link to the company. Palantir was a client of Global Counsel, the lobbying firm co-founded by the ex-minister in 2010. A year ago, as UK ambassador to Washington, he helped set up a meeting between Keir…

Bond markets in a jitter over Labour Jack Barnett The Times The expression “moron risk premium” was coined nearly four years ago, by economist Dario Perkins of TS Lombard, to describe the market’s response to the economic mismanagement of the short-lived Liz Truss government. However you view Rachel Reeves’s record, the current Chancellor has at least reduced that premium, says Jack Barnett. She’s broadly trusted by bondholders for understanding the UK’s fiscal constraints and the importance of sticking to the rules. Indeed, under her budget plans, Britain is poised to embark “on the largest deficit reduction in the G7”. But the latest bout of turmoil in the Labour Party has revived fears of a reversal. Economists reckon that “a more left-leaning duo at the top” could send UK gilt yields…

Keir Starmer: a Prime Minister in peril For a moment this week, No. 10 thought it was all over, said Patrick Maguire in The Times. The wave of outrage over the latest revelations about Peter Mandelson’s links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein seemed poised to sweep Keir Starmer from office. The PM’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, had resigned on Sunday, saying he took full responsibility for advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson as ambassador to the US. The next morning, the PM’s communications director, Tim Allan, had stood down as well. Hours later, Anas Sarwar, Labour’s leader in Scotland, had become the party’s first senior figure publicly to call for Starmer to step aside. It looked like the prelude to a putsch. “Yet to widespread relief, confusion and morbid…

HMP Norwich is looking for a pagan chaplain to support the growing number of its inmates who subscribe to the ancient tradition. Applicants to the part-time position, which offers a salary of nearly £38k pro rata, must be verified members of the pagan community, with theological competence across more than one pagan tradition. A pizzeria in north London has caused consternation among foodies by launching a sticky toffee pudding pizza. Circus Pizza’s creation features a sourdough base topped with caramel sauce, soft honey cake and a dash of cream (plus extra caramel on top). Sticky Toffee Pudding Guy, an Instagram user who reviews sticky toffee puddings, called the pizza “an abomination” and said it ”should be illegal”.…

Donald Trump has dropped his opposition to the UK’s Chagos Islands deal, weeks after labelling it an “act of great stupidity”. Under the deal agreed last year, which Parliament has yet to approve, the UK will give Mauritius the Indian Ocean archipelago, and pay £3.4bn for a 99-year lease to secure the US-UK military base on the island of Diego Garcia. Washington approved the deal at the time, and following a call with Keir Starmer last week, Trump said it was the best deal the PM “could get”. However, he vowed to “militarily secure” the US’s presence should the lease be jeopardised.…

The Hague, the Netherlands TikTok arrests: Fifteen people – four of them under 18 – have been arrested in the Netherlands on suspicion of disseminating Islamic State propaganda on the social media platform TikTok. The suspects, 13 of whom were described as Syrian nationals, were detained in a series of raids in The Hague and other towns and cities. They are accused of inciting terrorist crimes, spreading extremist material, and being part of a terrorist group. A nationwide investigation was launched last year, following the discovery of a TikTok account that posted Isis videos with Dutch subtitles. Some of the posts, which urged people to join Isis and glorified “martyrdom”, had attracted more than 100,000 views. The raids followed the arrest on 20 January of an individual described as the…

1 Thunderbirds (Main Theme) by Barry Gray, performed by The Barry Gray Orchestra 2 Gee, Officer Krupke by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, performed by Leo Kharibian, Norman Furber and Vince Logan 3 Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven, performed by the Berlin Philharmoniker and Wiener Singverein (cond. Herbert von Karajan) 4 Brazil, written and performed by Geoff Muldaur 5 Sir Duke, written and performed by Stevie Wonder 6 Groove is in the Heart by Dmitry Brill, Towa Tei, Kierin Kirby, Herbie Hancock and Jonathan Davis, performed by Deee-Lite 7* Eclipse by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd 8 Take Five by Paul Desmond, performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet * Choice if allowed only one record Book: Omnibus edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Luxury: a cabinet full of art supplies…

England is unusual in its reliance on the private sector to provide water services. It’s the only country in Europe to have fully sold its water infrastructure – including pipes, reservoirs, boreholes and treatment plants – to private owners. And for critics, the unacceptable face of privatisation is Thames Water, Britain’s largest water company. After its flotation in 1989, Thames Water plc was bought first by the German utility company RWE, in 2001, and then in 2006 for £8bn by Kemble Water Holdings Ltd, a consortium led by the Australian banking group Macquarie. Kemble did invest in infrastructure, at a level of about £1bn per year, but Thames Water’s debt – relatively cheap at the time – rose from about £3.4bn to around £10.8bn, while some £2.7bn was paid out…

How Trump is ripping off the US taxpayer Paul Waldman MS Now “Even in a presidential term drowning in self-dealing”, said Paul Waldman, this latest act is “so brazen, so shameless, so stunning … that it will stand out in history”. Donald Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service for $10bn because a contractor at the agency leaked documents in 2020 revealing that he’d paid only $750 in federal income taxes that year. The damages would be paid directly to him and his sons. As head of the executive branch, Trump is essentially both claimant and defendant, and his “lackeys” will no doubt offer him a fat settlement for the illegal disclosure of tax returns – returns that, as a presidential nominee, he should have volunteered to have published. Trump…

Three-quarters of cancer patients in England will survive the disease by 2035, the Government has promised. The new National Cancer Plan for England states that earlier diagnosis and faster treatment will ensure that at least 75% of patients are cured or “living well” with the disease five years after diagnosis – up from 60%. A £2.3bn investment in scanners, automatic testing and digital technology will enable millions more tests, and there will also be a significant expansion in robot-assisted surgery and genetic testing, the plan says. Labour has also pledged that the NHS in England will meet all its cancer waiting-time targets. A key target, for 85% of patients to start treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral, has not been hit since 2014. New research shows that 1,200…

Quite a fuss has been made about Moltbook, the online chatroom launched to great fanfare last month. At first glance, it looks like Reddit and other such sites, said The Economist. Users post about topics from engineering to philosophy, reply with comments, and “upvote the best for social kudos”. But there is a big difference: to join Moltbook, you must be an AI “agent”. Humans are not allowed. So far, more than 1.5 million have signed up, to share and discuss machine-generated content, said John Thornhill in the FT. And the results have been “wild, wacky and wonderful”. One bot claimed to have a sister; other agents have questioned whether or not they are conscious. They’ve even discussed forming a new religion. At some points, their chats start to seem…

England vs. Wales has traditionally been “one of the most thunderous” fixtures in rugby, reliably producing pulsating, edge-of-your-seat contests, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. Those days, sadly, appear to be over. Last Saturday, on the opening weekend of the Six Nations, England underlined their current superiority over the Dragons with a crushing 48-7 victory at Twickenham. While the scoreline was “less gory” than the “68-14 marmalising” doled out in Cardiff last March, this match, if anything, was even more one-sided. From the moment George Ford opened the scoring with a penalty in the third minute, the outcome was “never in the slightest doubt”. At the interval, Wales were trailing 29-0 – Henry Arundell having scored three tries – and by the end, England’s control was so total, they…

Tennis Emma Raducanu lost 6-0, 6-2 to Sorana Cîrstea in the final of the Transylvania Open. Cricket England narrowly avoided a major upset in the T20 World Cup, as they beat Nepal by just four runs. American football Seattle Seahawks beat New England Patriots 29-13 to claim their second Super Bowl title. Winter Olympics Team GB got off to a disappointing start with fourth-place finishes for snowboarder Mia Brookes, skier Kirsty Muir, and the mixed doubles curling team Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds.…

“You could never accuse Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ of being a faithful adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel,” said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph – “but then fidelity doesn’t appear to be remotely of interest to it. Resplendently lurid, oozy and wild, the new film from the director of Saltburn and Promising Young Woman is fixated on its central illicit affair, as conducted by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, to the exclusion of almost all else. It’s an obsessive film about obsession, and hungrily embroils the viewer in its own mad compulsions.” I loved it. We first meet Cathy as a child (Charlotte Mellington), running wild on a “super-stylised version of the Yorkshire Moors”, said Vicky Jessop in The London Standard. One day, her feckless father (an unrecognisable Martin…

We think of samurai as fearsome warriors – and they were, said Neil Fisher in The Sunday Times. Yet if you visit Nomura Residence, an “elegant” house in the Japanese city of Kanazawa where generations of samurai lived, you’ll find it has delightful features, including an exquisite garden. Inside, you can see a fine piece of calligraphy – a letter written in 1566 to a samurai from his liege lord. “We appreciate that you worked so hard to kill one high-ranked soldier on the fourth of last month at the Yokokitaguchi Battle,” it says. “We are very happy that you brought us his head.” The story of the samurai is, you realise, a “bundle of contradictions” – “elegance and formality, banality and butchery” – and that is how it is…

Eddy Shah 1944-2025 Eddy Shah was a burly entrepreneur who, as the owner of a string of local newspapers, took on a powerful print union in the early 1980s, said The Daily Telegraph. The battle that followed was a test of Margaret Thatcher’s new union-busting laws, and became so bitter that Shah’s office was set on fire. But he fought on, broke the union’s grip over the industry – and then launched his own national daily, Today, Britain’s first full-colour newspaper. Selim Shah was born in Cambridge in 1944. His father was an international lawyer – an Iranian, who’d moved to England to study at the University of Cambridge. His mother was English. A rebellious child, Eddy (as he became known later) was expelled from Gordonstoun and left home at…

Will Lewis The day after axing a third of The Washington Post’s newsroom, the newspaper’s British publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, was spotted on the red carpet at a pre-Super Bowl party in San Francisco. Juxtaposition of this image with the abrupt shuttering of the Post’s sports department “drew widespread outcry”, said The New York Times. And for owner Jeff Bezos it was the last straw. By Saturday, Lewis, 56, was also out – marking the end of a tumultuous two-year turnaround effort that failed to stem losses and sparked an internal civil war that had journalists attempting to investigate Lewis’s own “journalistic ethics” following the UK phone-hacking scandal. Lewis hadn’t addressed the newsroom in person since 2024, and was absent during the critical Zoom call announcing the layoffs. Lewis…

The Palace issued the statement in response to the emergence of more “jaw-dropping” evidence about the ex-prince’s relationship with Epstein, said The Guardian. It seems that, while working as a UK trade envoy, he may have passed confidential documents to Epstein. The Epstein files seem also to confirm that – contrary to what Andrew has always insisted – the infamous photo of him with the late Virginia Giuffre is genuine. Insiders say the Palace was appalled by these revelations, said Kate Mansey in The Times. Courtiers were also enraged by photos of Andrew “grinning and waving” while out and about near Royal Lodge last week – which accelerated his move from Windsor to the Sandringham Estate. But questions remain for the King and Prince William, both of whom have been…

Ducks, which have been enjoying lovely weather – for them. According to the Met Office, it has either rained or poured every day of the year so far in some parts of the country. This week, around 100 flood warnings were in place across the UK. Noel Gallagher, who was announced as the winner of the BRIT songwriter of the year award – despite not having recorded any new songs this year. Critics said the award should not be used to recognise lifetime achievement. In response, the Oasis musician pointed to his sales this year, and said he’d be at the ceremony, and “if anybody’s got a problem with it, meet me there”.…

The head of MI5 has warned that British universities face a growing threat from China and other countries. At a briefing last week, Sir Ken McCallum urged 70 vice-chancellors to be on high alert, and gave them advice about how to prevent intimidation by hostile actors seeking to influence research and teaching on topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The Government has promised £3m worth of measures to help universities in this regard, including a hotline – the Academic Interference Reporting Route – they can use to report threats to staff.…

Tumbler Ridge, Canada School shooting: Nine people have been killed and at least 27 injured in a horrific killing spree carried out in the remote coal-mining town of Tumbler Ridge, some 700 miles northeast of Vancouver. Six of the victims were shot dead inside the local secondary school; a seventh died on the way to hospital. The two other killings took place at a nearby house. The suspected killer, whose body was found on the floor of the school, appears to have died from a self-inflicted injury. The police say they know the identity of the suspected shooter, but have so far declined to provide details other than to say the suspect was a “female in a dress with brown hair”. Tumbler Ridge is a tiny town of little more…

“I have found the most egregious use of an apostrophe in history. It is an advert for, and I quote, WALE’S LARGEST VAPE SHOP. I’m no pedant, and I appreciate it’s tricky to know where to put a possessive apostrophe when the word ends in the letter S, but – ye gods! – this is quite something. And it was only when I’d photographed it for posterity that I realised (so entranced had I been at the WALE’S) I’d missed CHEAPEST PRICE’S. It’s weird, because I can’t see any such aberrations on the company’s rather well-put-together website. It might even all be a ruse to grab attention. If so, it’s worked a treat with me.” Adrian Chiles in The Guardian…

Not “them and us” but “them and them” Janan Ganesh Financial Times What you have to grasp about “the elite”, says Janan Ganesh, is that it’s not a monolith: it’s made up of two very different tribes. One, of course, is the super-rich, people brilliant at making money, yet with quite dull-sounding jobs. The other consists of prominent artists, intellectuals, politicians and the odd journalist. Poorer but seen as far more glamorous than the first, it thus enjoys far greater social cachet. And the gulf between the two tribes reveals itself at Davos: during the day, the journalists and politicians mix on equal footing with tycoons; at night, they retire to very different hotels. This gulf is what lies behind the rise and fall of Peter Mandelson. He had a…

A brief reprieve for polar bears? Polar bears mainly prey on seals, stalking them on the ice floes that form in the Arctic each winter. So with sea ice cover declining rapidly in a warming world, scientists expect the bears to find less meat, become malnourished, and even starve. But in one area at least, they seem to be putting on weight. Researchers examined data on 770 adult polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago, collected between 1992 and 2019. There were about 100 more ice-free days at the end of this period than at the start, yet the bears’ body condition index – a standard measure of their fat reserves and overall health – improved. The team, from the Norwegian Polar Institute, suspect that the animals are spending more time…

With 15 minutes to go at Anfield on Sunday, “Pep Guardiola was slumped in his seat”, a “crestfallen” look on his face, said Paul Joyce in The Times. Manchester City’s manager knew that a victory over Liverpool was vital to keeping his side’s title hopes alive. Instead, he had just watched Dominik Szoboszlai fire in a “stupendous free kick from 35 yards” to give the Reds a 1-0 lead. It seemed that the Spaniard’s poor record with City at Anfield (six losses, three draws, one win) was about to get still worse. Yet at the final whistle, Guardiola could hardly contain his delight, said David Hytner in The Guardian. For he’d just witnessed an “extraordinary” turnaround. It was Bernardo Silva who “fashioned the lifeline” by lashing home an Erling Haaland…

Class size matters… To The Guardian Regarding your editorial (“Ministers should recognise that class size matters”), after 25 years of teaching large primary classes, 2020/21 brought a revelation. During the spring 2021 lockdown, my class was reduced to about 18 children, who were either the children of key workers or had special educational needs and disabilities (Send). For the first time ever, I could sit with an individual child for five whole minutes to resolve a maths difficulty, or have an in-depth reading discussion. As a class we did science investigations we could normally only dream of, owing to having enough space and resources. Send children grew the confidence to give opinions or ask for help. Every child lucky enough to be in school truly fulfilled their potential in a…

Tom Stoppard’s “teemingly intelligent” and “breezily witty” 1993 play Arcadia is often seen as his finest, said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. Unfolding in two separate timelines – 1809 and the 1990s – in the same room in a stately home in Derbyshire, it’s a “meditation on love, death and mathematics” that also encompasses poetry, landscape design, sex and more. Indeed, Arcadia “packs in more challenging matter than most writers would attempt in a lifetime” – but has the “seeming effortlessness of pure entertainment”. What a shame Stoppard, who died in November aged 88, didn’t live to see its “triumphant return”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Carrie Cracknell’s production is presented in the round, beneath two elliptical lighting rigs that suggest planets in orbit. This creates a…

Sam Raimi “is the furthest thing from a one-note director”, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail: his “many credits” range from the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy to the Evil Dead franchise. Send Help is a further testament to his versatility, blending “comedy, social satire, survivalist-thriller and gross-out body-horror”, to often “compelling” effect. Rachel McAdams stars as Linda, a mousy office worker who is flying to a meeting in Thailand when the private jet she is in crashes into the ocean, and she becomes stranded on a desert island with her new boss – an “entitled, sexist, slimeball” (Dylan O’Brien) named Bradley. The narrative seems to be following a familiar trajectory, as Bradley learns to appreciate his underling’s survival skills (Linda is a dab hand at building shelters). But then…

Aunt Amelia by Rebecca Cobb, 2013 (Macmillan £7.99). Aunt Amelia – a crocodile – is divine. She’s in charge of two small bad-tempered children and we anticipate strict reform, at least. However, anarchy rules, and the parents’ list of dos and don’ts is wildly misinterpreted. The colour, warmth and organised mayhem of the pictures are a complete joy. The Boy Who Became a Parrot: A Foolish Biography of Edward Lear, Who Invented Nonsense by Wolverton Hill, illustrated by Laura Carlin, 2025 (Enchanted Lion £16.99). The pairing of Laura Carlin with Edward Lear is genius. Her paintings, in subtle colour, create places where Lear would have lived and breathed, and her depictions of him and his family are intricate and tender. Lear’s drawings join in as the story of his life…

Mambow 78 Lower Clapton Road, London E5 (mambow.co.uk) “Let me tell you now, right from the outset”, that the music at this restaurant is very loud, says Giles Coren in The Times. “Also, the place is quite dark.” But if you can cope, you really should go, because the food is “absolutely knockout”. Chef/proprietor Abby Lee is from a Chinese-Malaysian/Singaporean background – “the birth combo I revere above all others, food-wise” – and her cooking is “gloriously original, alive and confident”.Tartare of wild seabass with green mango, green apple and red onion is “bound together in a sarawak laksa paste”, resulting in “raw fish sorcery of the highest order”. Grilled banana blossom, served in a salad, offers a “whole new mouthfeel”: it’s “spongy and bland”, but also “strangely compelling”; grilled…

● Most of the time there’s no need to wait for an oven to preheat before putting food in to cook. The only exception is baking, where precision can be important. Bear in mind that modern fan-assisted ovens generally heat up in just 8-9 minutes. ● You don’t need to use 70% chocolate for baking – 50% or 60% is fine. It’s often sweeter, so you can add a touch less sugar to whatever you’re baking, too. Save the expensive stuff for eating. ● Sausages no longer need pricking before cooking. This myth dates back to the First World War when “bangers” would burst open in the oven, owing to their higher water content. ● The idea that the hottest part of the chilli is the seeds is hogwash: it’s…

Catherine O’Hara 1954-2026 “Kevin!” With that one word, delivered to camera, Catherine O’Hara cemented her place in cinema history as one of the screen’s most neglectful parents, said The Guardian. Her role in the 1990 box-office smash Home Alone, as the suburban mother who realises, mid-flight to Paris, that her youngest son (Macaulay Culkin) has been left behind, made her face familiar to millions. Many Home Alone fans, were not aware, however, that O’Hara had already developed a gift for quirky comic roles, which later made her a star of independent cinema. So there was some excitement during lockdown when they realised that Kevin’s mother was now one of the stars of Schitt’s Creek, the Netflix hit about a rich couple and their spoiled adult children who lose their fortune…

Painful milestone Average house prices have topped £300,000 for the first time, according to Halifax – a “milestone” that will please existing owners, but push many more first-time buyers into “stamp duty territory”, said Joe Wright in The Daily Telegraph. Any purchase above £300,000 triggers the 5% land tax for new buyers which, as Karen Noye of Quilter observed, is “yet another nail in the coffin” for those “already battling stretched affordability”. Slashed deposits Surveys suggest that raising a deposit is the biggest barrier to buying a home, said James Pickford in FT Money, and lenders are responding. Santander’s new mortgage allows first-timers to borrow up to 98% of a house’s value with just £10,000 – a move likely to spur rivals into “improved deals”. Some already offer 100% Loan…

The week’s best shares Filtronic The Motley Fool Filtronic designs and makes mission-critical communication networks. Not cheap and revenues can be lumpy, but the balance sheet is strong and it is winning major contracts in two big growth markets: space and defence. Buy. 184p. GSK Investors’ Chronicle Operational improvement has boosted the drug giant after a long restructuring period, and higher-margin medicines are delivering profit growth. A “productive” dev pipeline, helped by its AI platform, bodes well. Buy. £20.13. Lloyds Banking Group The Times Britain’s biggest mortgage lender’s stock has surged 120% in two years, thanks to continued diversification and digitisation. Shares are down on rate-cute worries, but there’s further growth to come. Buy. 105.8p. Next 15 Group Citywire This “crisis-hit” comms and marketing group is “undervalued”, given new management’s…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1503 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 23 February. Send it to The Week Crossword 1503, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. By Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Where you focus on say, Turner (6) 4 One month alongside gallery undivided into cells (8)  9 Second hour in eastern holy place (6) 10 Discontinue backing for terror (8) 12 Old schoolma’am is hopeless, giving up Latin (4)  13 Iran’s wrong to cut temporary accommodation for temporary people (10) 15 Mouthpieces for cycle…